The Man with the Baltic Stare

Chapter One

Major Kim had told me to make sure that the evidence in Macau pointed “elsewhere.” When I asked what the evidence was, he told me that was for me to find out. When I asked how bad it was, he said very simply, “Bad.”

“There wasn’t time to set up your trip through the normal contacts,” he said just before I left for the airport. “You may run into interference here and there. I’ll keep doing what I can to smooth things out from this end, but mostly you are on your own.”

“Do I have a number to call in case of a real emergency?”

“No.” Kim spread his hands. “Nothing. It’s not that sort of assignment. You’ll have to deal with things as they come up.”

“Do you know me if something goes wrong?”

“What do you think?”

“About the passport.”

“What about the passport?”

“I need something else.”

“You may as well get used to carrying ROK documents, Inspector. Besides, on such short notice, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t come up with anything else. Don’t worry; you won’t die simply from handling it.”

I wasn’t worried about a dread illness. I was worried about the entry stamps-they didn’t look right. If they don’t look right, even for a moment, they get a second glance from Immigration. And if they got a second glance, it usually meant having to answer a lot of questions in a hot room. I had that happen in Copenhagen once, and I didn’t plan to go through it again. Some Danes are very persistent. I could see Kim wasn’t going to budge, though, so I moved on. People can be stubborn about passports, even phony ones. “What about emergency funds?”

“You have all you’ll need.”

“There’s not very much in this little envelope.”

“There never is. I don’t have more to spare. Be thankful you have an airline ticket and a hotel reservation. If you pay anything out of pocket, you’ll be reimbursed, though it takes forever.”

“How about advice? That’s free.”

“Stay away from your own people in Macau. They’re all over the place, and they won’t know you’re there. At least, they’re not supposed to know. Don’t wink or nod or give a secret handshake to anyone. Stay out of Korean restaurants. I don’t know who stands where on what issue, and we don’t want to find out the hard way.”

“You mean they don’t know what’s going on here?”

Kim shrugged. “Hell, Inspector, I don’t even know most of the time.”

We laughed. Neither of us thought it was funny.

2

My plane landed in Hong Kong around five o’clock on a muggy afternoon. I waited around in the airport for a couple of hours until the ferry left for Macau. We pulled up to the dock around eight at night; it was so humid that the raindrops were sweating. The immigration officer was bored, but not so bored that he didn’t look at every page in my passport. Then he did it again, this time flicking each page with a sharp click, letting me know he wasn’t fooled one little bit by all the travel that never happened. Finally, he stamped it wearily, unwilling to make an issue of what he knew could not be easily dismissed. He handed it back, never looking at me, as one might not look at a bag of garbage dropped at the front door.

When I gave the cabdriver the piece of paper with the hotel’s address, he studied it for a long time. “OK,” he said finally. He shouted into his phone, and I heard laughter from the other end. We drove down a wide street lined with casinos, neon signs dancing and shouting and making a mess of the night. Finally, we turned onto a quiet street, went another block, and then turned again. The hotel was a hole-in-the-wall between two dark buildings that looked abandoned. There was lettering over the entrance, “Hotel Nam Lo,” and a piece of poster board just inside the door with pictures of the rooms. They looked bleak. The front desk was up a flight of stairs that led to a lobby big enough for a person to turn around and go back downstairs to find another place. Kim had said I should be grateful that I had a hotel. He had never met the desk clerk. The clerk looked up and shouted at me in Cantonese. Years ago I learned that having to cope with too many tones in a language makes a person angry. Who wants to go through all that effort to say something that someone else can coast through in a monotone? I let him vent.

“Three nights!” he said at last, in Mandarin. Having to deal in only four tones seemed to calm him down. “You must really think you’re something. For everyone else, the rooms are for a shorter time. A couple of hours, but not you! Must be some pills you got.”

“Is there a problem with three days?”

“No problem, as long as you aren’t doing something weird. I don’t want police around.”

“OK by me.”

“Absolutely nothing with animals.”

“Nothing with hooves.”

He put on his glasses and gave me a hard look. “Pay in advance. Extra day for damages.”

“Over my dead body.”

“Might be. That’s why you pay in advance.”

The room was up another flight of stairs. It was exactly like the picture, small and grim. I edged in. There was space enough for a ratty chair and one lamp with a minibulb. The television didn’t work; the phone made gurgling sounds when I accidentally knocked it off the hook.

Thumping noises came through the wall from the room next to mine, but nothing that sounded like an emergency. I wasn’t tired; it wasn’t that late yet. I knew I’d strangle myself if I stayed in the room for another minute, so I went for a walk. One block to the right of the hotel were buildings with pulsating signs; the block to the left was deserted, empty, almost completely dead. A couple of jewelry shops were open, but the clerks were dozing with their heads on the counters.

Climbing the stairs back to my room, I passed a young girl coming down-short skirt, white mesh stockings. She had green eyes; even in the dim light of the stairwell you couldn’t have missed those eyes.

“Watch yourself,” I said in Russian. “It’s dark outside.”

“You speak Russian.” She paused on the step below mine and looked back up at me with her green eyes. She wasn’t more than twenty.

“I speak Russian,” I said. “Go home; go back to your family.”

“In five months,” she said. “Good night.”

It was simple, I thought as the stairway swallowed her. When you’re young, five months can solve everything.

3

The next day, as soon as I found the right person, I would be able to see what was bothering Kim. The problem was finding the right person. It was already warm by eight in the morning, with the promise of humidity breathing down my neck. Even so, the sky sparkled; the streets were noisy with buses and taxis and motorbikes. It felt like a different town from what I’d seen last night. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Everybody I asked was polite, but no, it was not possible for them to interact with me on an official basis without express approval of the proper authority. And who would that be? It was impossible to reveal without the authorization of that excellent person. At last, I was told that if I went to the post office in Senado Square and asked at window five, there would be a message waiting. The square was not far away; the clerk at window five produced the message as if passing messages were her main job. I was to call a certain phone number before noon. It was nearly 11:55, and there wasn’t a phone in the post office-a machine selling all manner of phone cards, yes, but an actual telephone? The clerk shrugged. I spotted four phones in the office behind her. No, she said, and closed her window, it was not possible for an unofficial person to use one of those official phones. Perhaps, I said, the clerk would be kind enough to point me in the general direction of a pay phone? She recited the directions: “Outside, turn right, go up the square-though it isn’t really a square,” she said, “more like a cardboard box that has collapsed at one end-past St. Dominic’s, which is yellow and not easy to miss, bear right, turn left at the ice-cream shop, and there, about twenty-five meters on the right, will be two phones. Only one of them works, unless, as sometimes happens, neither does.” She gave me a faraway smile. “One never knows.”

I trotted on the path she indicated and found what she promised. The phone on the left had a dial tone. I threw in all manner of coins and was connected to a male voice. It was 11:59.

“Ah, Inspector, I’ve been wondering if you had decided to go home.”

“The idea occurred to me.” I had no idea who I was talking to, which put me at a disadvantage, because the person on the other end seemed to know me. “We might have saved time if you had left this number at my hotel.”

“But we did; we did! The old man at the front desk didn’t give it to you?”

“He did not.”

“In that case, where did you get the number?”

“At the post office.”

“Indeed!”

“Perhaps we should meet, assuming you are the excellent person who can help me.”

“God helps those who help themselves, Inspector.” It was possible that Kim had told this man to expect me. Or Pang. Or even Zhao. The passport didn’t list my title, and for purposes of this trip I was a diamond salesman, which I had put down on the immigration card. “But I do what I can. It might be wise if we continued our conversation in my office.”

“And where would that be?”

“The location is not well known.”

“Perhaps you could tell me-quickly. I think I’m running out of coins.”

“You are where?”

“Past St. Dominic’s, and a few steps beyond the ice cream.”

“There are two phones? The one on the right does not work?”

“Correct.”

“Then we are very near to each other!”

“God’s will,” I said, only because I had a feeling it might get me somewhere.

“Unlikely. No, in this case I suspect it was the Ministry of State Security man who parks his van near the Lisboa at night to keep an eye on the Russian prostitutes and their clients. You talked to him?”

“I don’t know who I talked to. The van was a trash heap.”

“Yes, he loves pork buns. Buys them by the bagful.”

“So, MSS is part of this?”

Laughter. “My goodness, how could they not be? Very well, you’re within a few meters of a sign with an arrow pointing toward the ruins of St. Paul’s. Head in that direction for another twenty meters. On your left will be a small shop, dark, and very crowded with machinery and tools and wood.”

“Wood?”

“The sign painted over the doorway will say: ‘Carpenteria.’ It is a place where they make fine furniture and intricate wooden screens. As you’ll see, it is really quite beautiful. My office is in the back. I’ll let them know to expect you. They close at noon, so hurry.”

4

There were no introductions. The man behind the desk pointed to a chair, checked his watch, and began to summarize from a folder that he held casually in one hand:

“A young man, very rich, with the violent temper that came from too much pressure and too much restraint, had taken a very pretty, very elegant, very expensive prostitute into his room. They’d ordered dinner, watched a movie, and then started to argue. She threw things. He strangled her. In a panic, he cut her up in the marble bathroom and put her in a four-wheeled suitcase. Then he took a shower, went to breakfast-coffee, no cream, one sugar-read the paper, told the Assistant Manager he needed a limo to the airport, settled the bill in Hong Kong dollars, and all at once changed his mind. He didn’t want to go to the airport, he said. No, he needed a rental car, something with a big trunk, so he could drive around and see the sights before he left. He produced a map-which way was the harbor?” The man looked up to assure himself I was listening closely.

“About breakfast, no rice congee?”

“No, why should he have rice congee for breakfast?”

“Just wondering.” Major Kim’s story suddenly had holes.

The man studied me a moment and then continued, “Security has tapes from the surveillance cameras. A girl had gone into his room. She did not rappel down the side of the building from the thirty-fourth floor. A helicopter did not pluck her from the balcony; indeed, the room had no balcony, even though that was what the young man had requested. The girl never left, it was concluded by all who watched the tapes, not unless you counted the drops of blood on the carpet down the hallway to the elevator.” The folder was closed and put on the desk. “His fingerprints are on the knife.” The room was growing hot. A fan started up and blew the hot air into a corner. It also blew the folder off the desk. The man smiled. He was cool and collected, a nice-looking, gray-haired policeman, rather thin, with long-fingered hands that he used to emphasize various points he seemed to think I might otherwise miss. He wasn’t what anyone would call rugged, and he had about him what can only be called an indescribable air. He didn’t look Chinese to me; I would have said he was Portuguese.

“I don’t know why rich people do it,” he said, and his long fingers sliced the air, “but they often chop each other to pieces, like a plate of Portuguese chicken.”

I decided this was my opportunity to throw in a few questions, not only to get some answers but also to test his technique. “Rich. Do we know that?”

“Very few street people take suites at five-star hotels.” He smiled. “How did I do, Inspector? Passing grade?”

“So, you have a suspect, a rich male. You’re not saying, but I assume he’s Asian.” There was no sense specifying where in Asia I meant if for some reason they didn’t already have that. “If he was a Westerner, you wouldn’t even be talking to me. And where is he now?”

“Don’t know.”

“He’s left Macau?”

“Don’t know.”

“He’s still in Macau?”

“Possibly.”

“ ‘A change in pattern responses represents a break in the subject’s concentration, which is useful to exploit.’ That’s from our training manual, if I recall correctly. Can you still remember yours?”

“Our manual said ‘when the subject attempts to raise a new topic, it’s a sign of stress.’ Relax, Inspector; no one is going to bite you. And neither of us is a subject, as far as I know. Please, if you wish, assume our man is still in Macau. In fact, assume anything you want. Assumptions are fine. They are like bouquets of flowers, nice to have around. Or should I compare them to the bottled water in your hotel room? Compliments of the house.”

There was no such thing in my hotel room. No bottle, no space for a bottle. “I assume you have a full file, something other than that folder that is on your desk.” It was actually on the floor, the papers fluttering whenever the fan swept over them. Pointing that out seemed unnecessary.

“Of course I have a file. We exist on files. They are like vitamins, like oxygen, like red blood cells. Your department has another approach perhaps? Something more modern? If there is a way to the truth without files, I’d like to know what it is.”

“We swim in paper, same as you.” I surveyed the office. No computer. That was comforting. It meant not having to deal with references to nodes and links and regressions.

“You share your files with anyone who walks in the door, of course.” He walked his fingers up to the edge of the desk and then let them jump off.

“Yes, that is our approach exactly. Files to the people.” I smiled to demonstrate I was not going to be a burden on his day. “I assume you eat lunch?”

The man immediately stood up and buttoned his jacket. He had the figure of a bullfighter. “I do, as often as I can, though the limits of custom and of government regulation dictate I enjoy lunch only once a day. It is my favorite meal. Dinner has considerable freight attached to it. Breakfast is an evolutionary afterthought. But lunch! Just as the day is reaching full potential-the sun scorching, the air heavy, the restaurant cool, the dark glass along the front turning the outside into a dance of vivid color while the leaves of the ficus trees flutter in a breeze God grants only to them. And on the table, a glass of wine, a plate of chicken and rice, a freshly baked roll dozing on its own little blue plate. What could be wrong with life at such a moment?” He shook his head. “Do you favor ficus trees, Inspector?”

“I’d have to think about it.” Actually, I found them despicable trees, twisted around themselves as if they were afraid of the sky. “Why do you ask?”

“There are so many of them in Macau. They are like people.”

“Interesting thought.”

“Look at them closely when you have some time. They grow apart and then together again.”

“My grandfather thought chestnut trees were like people-old people and foreigners. He considered them cranky.”

“Interesting thought.”

“Let me buy you lunch, then.”

He bowed, a little stiffly. “My name is Luís da Silva Mouzinho de Albuquerque.” He paused and observed me through slightly narrowed eyes. “I notice you do not laugh. The name means nothing to you?”

“It’s long, but I can’t say it tickles me.”

“Good. Some people smile when they hear it. Luís da Silva Mouzinho de Albuquerque existed long ago. He was a man of many facets, and had one of those tangled lives that great people in those days lived. He was no relation to me, none that I know of, but it amused my father, who was Macanese, to name me after this man. My mother, a Chinese woman of strong opinions, was not so amused. Worse, there was never room in the space provided for ‘name’ on all the applications necessary for one’s journey through life. Believe me, it was not always a pleasure. It is also, I realize, not as easy to remember as ‘O.’ Please call me Luís.” He extended his hand. “I appreciate your invitation. It is very kind of you, but I fear I can’t accept. It would be against all regulations, in force and contemplated-part of our anti-corruption drive, our fourth in as many years. I cannot go into a casino unless in pursuit of a suspect, I cannot be in the presence of any gaming authority unless there are three other people present, no two of whom can know each other, and I cannot accept a meal if it means sitting down.”

We shook hands warmly. “You have to remain on your feet when you eat?”

“Yes, if someone else buys the meal. Standing is less corrupting, apparently. I can nibble tiny sandwiches by the plateful. I can heap on lobster, eat caviar with a shovel. But only if I stand.”

“Perhaps, Luís, there is a restaurant where we can stand at the bar?”

He bowed, with more grace than the first time. “I have heard of such a place. In fact,” he said as he straightened his tie, “I have heard it is nearby.”

“How did you know my name, incidentally?”

“This is Macau, Inspector.”

5

The bartender was a woman with a neck as thick as her head. All the more surprising that she had a voice as sweet as the spring breeze across a field of wildflowers. She and Luís exchanged a few words in what I took to be Portuguese. It sounded like Russian, but it was too wet around the edges.

“If you heard her on the radio,” Luís said in English to me, “you’d fall in love, as I already have.” He kissed her hand. “This is Lulu,” he said. “She can do no wrong.”

Lulu blushed, which must have put a strain on her heart. “And what would Senhor Police Captain like to start off with?” she asked. The room was suddenly a meadow in the glories of May. Exactly as Luís had said, the ficus trees rustled in a breeze; the colors of the day flowed through the darkened glass of the long front window.

“A leg, my dear Lulu. Surrender it to me or I shall go mad.” Luís’ voice was low and dreamy.

Next to this woman, Luís appeared frail; the thought of her leg worried me. “I thought you had to remain standing,” I said.

Lulu turned to me. “And you? What can I offer?” She leaned her arms on the bar top and began to remove my clothing with limpid eyes. “You prefer white meat, perhaps?”

I coughed politely. What a voice! It could make a man weak in the knees. “I’ll have what Luís has,” I rasped.

“Good, then it’s settled.” Luís looked around the bar. “I’ll have a drumstick, and so will the Inspector. We’ll hunt for the rest of the chicken another time, eh? Some wine, Lulu.” He clapped me on the back. “See what I mean about lunch?”

6

“This is completely against regulations, Inspector, taking you to the crime scene.” We were walking through the hotel lobby, a gargantuan, stomach-churning place not conceived for loitering or watching the passing parade. Whenever a parade did pass, it was into the open maw of the casino, where attendants in blazing orange coats kept the money moving in one direction. Most of the state security people positioned around the edges of the cavernous space were easy enough to spot. They might as well have been wearing signs. This wasn’t the result of sloppiness or inattention. It was deliberate, designed to breed confidence in anyone looking to avoid the MSS. The principle at work was simple and well proven-confidence bred contempt, and contempt bred the tiny mistake that led, without exception or mercy, to a quick trial and then a bullet in the back of the head. Some of this effort was aimed at Chinese officials gambling with money they weren’t supposed to have; some of it was a normal screen. You know there are insects, so you put up a net. Some of them you get before they come in the window; the rest you squash when the opportunity arises.

In truth, it didn’t much matter how many security officers were standing around. Every employee and every hotel worked for them in one way or another, sooner or later. A few of those employees also worked for the triads. A few more fattened their paychecks by working for a foreign “friend” who didn’t ask for much and then only once in a while but always had an extra envelope waiting for them. The old man at the Nam Lo’s front desk probably worked part-time for all three. By now, each of his employers knew an unusual guest had checked in. Even if he had waited to tell them, the bored immigration official would have already raised a flag that all three would have noticed.

“The elevator is around the corner.” Luís was several steps ahead of me. “Don’t gawk, Inspector, or it will make you dizzy. Nothing in this lobby fits with anything, so everything seems to be whirling around and repelled by everything else. The place is an abomination, I agree.”

The elevator took us smoothly to the thirty-fourth floor. As we stepped out, Luís took a key card from his pocket. “Room Thirty-four Twenty-seven, to the left. This is the executive preserve, but I don’t know if there are any executives awake yet. In any case, we’ll tread softly.”

Treading proved to be no problem. The hallway carpet was thick and the walls were completely soundproofed. Every room would be an isolated world in the middle of nowhere. Luís paused at a door and read the number. “Don’t touch anything; don’t take notes; just look. Regulations.”

“You have a lot of regulations, it seems.”

“We do. That happens in warm climates, have you noticed?”

“But you don’t follow them all.”

Luís shrugged and opened the door. “I do what I can.”

7

As soon as we stepped inside, I realized that the middle of nowhere was exactly what had been on the mind of the interior decorator. Room 3427 was a place where nothing led to nothing, shapes blurred, and colors blended, with the exception, perhaps, of one particularly noxious square chair, bloodred leather that looked about to leap screaming from the window. The living room was considerably longer than it was wide, which was perfect for an executive used to working in a tunnel. The bedroom was not much better, and because of the odd shape of the building it was a tunnel sliced by a large angled column necessary to bear the weight of the twenty floors above that hung out from the building in a series of steps. The effect was to remind anyone trying to sleep that their life was dependent on this column and that the construction company that put it up had no doubt scrimped on materials in order to pay off the building inspector who at this very moment was in the casino downstairs, one small step ahead of the MSS. Outside the bedroom window the view was obstructed by steel framing with no obvious purpose. It couldn’t possibly be structural, I thought. If it was, I wanted to get to a lower floor right away. The column in the bedroom came up about a meter from the window, creating an isolated alcove so useless that not even the crazed decorator had been tempted to use it. An absurdly wide window ledge added the final touch, separating the room from any sense of connection with the rest of the planet and underlining the impression that the hotel might actually not even be part of the known universe.

Because the room was on the corner of the building, the bedroom had windows along two walls. Looking out from the window opposite the bed, I spotted bamboo. Even here, in such a humid place, I thought, it doesn’t grow to thirty-four stories. “What is that?” I pointed.

Luís swam across the carpet. “It’s what they call a sky garden, balconies that take advantage of all of the crisscrossing structural beams. This floor doesn’t have any. I don’t know if the architect had them in the original plans, or if they were an afterthought designed to squeeze out extra money from the guests. It is hard to tell.”

“It looks to me that whoever might be lounging in the chaise down on that porch could probably see someone at this window.”

“I suppose so. We haven’t checked.”

Haven’t checked? What had they been doing for the last few weeks? “If one can see, presumably one can also hear, no?”

“Probably not. The glass is very thick. And the rooms, as you can tell, are completely soundproofed. The walls have baffling on them covered in what looks like leather. It’s like living in a cow’s stomach. Personally, I wouldn’t pay the money.”

“How much?”

“About eight thousand Macau dollars, maybe a thousand in real money, or ten of your super notes if you prefer.”

“Where’s the bathroom?”

“Can’t you wait until we get downstairs?”

“I only want to look, Luís.”

“Ah, well.” He pointed. “It’s tucked away nicely.”

The carpet stopped and a marble floor announced the entrance to a small hall that bent around a corner to the bathroom-Jacuzzi, dry sauna, and separate toilet with its own television, which worked. Opposite the bathtub was a long window, again looking down on a porch attached to the floor below.

“A reckless bather could put on a nice show,” I said. As I moved to the window, I tripped on a ledge at floor level-no doubt the Ur beam holding the whole place up.

“Not what your thousand-dollar toes want to find at three in the morning.” Luís was searching along the side of the window. “There’s a shade here somewhere, but it goes up and down electronically and the switch is the devil to locate. Most people probably don’t bother with it.”

“Let’s go back to the living room.” I limped into the tunnel and pointed out the window. A city the size of Macau is not spectacular much above the twentieth floor. The contours of the hills are lost, and the quaintness of the colonial buildings is impossible to distinguish without binoculars. Who wants to pay a thousand a night to look at the view through binoculars? “What is that? That tall wall with all the windows, at the top of what looks like a long stairway, what is it?”

“Those are the ruins of St. Paul’s. You were practically there when you came to my office. You want to go see them?”

“A lot of stair-climbing to see ruins on a hot afternoon,” I said.

“It is well to look up to God, Inspector.”

“Perhaps,” I said, “but I don’t need a heart attack in the process.” I pointed a little to the right. “And those ruins, next to Paul’s?”

“The hilltop fort. The Portuguese built it in the early sixteen hundreds. It’s a nice climb up the hill. The view from there is much better than from here, or it would be if this hotel were blown up. You probably can’t make it out, but the Portuguese consulate is down in front of the fort, at the bottom of the hill. Interesting building, very colonial. Extremely yellow.”

“Is there a room safe?”

“No, I think the Consul General keeps his valuables at home.”

“I mean in this room.”

“Of course.” We walked over to the dressing area, more dark wood, subdued lighting, muted colors. It was exactly the place to mourn the loss of a year’s worth of bribes in a single game of baccarat. “The safe is in the top drawer of the dresser. Would you like to put something in for safekeeping?”

“No, thank you.” I bounced up and down on my toes. “A suitcase full of body parts wouldn’t have rolled very well on this carpet,” I said.

“It was an expensive suitcase.” Luís opened the drawer and touched some buttons on the safe. “I think they design them for all contingencies. Besides, the floor from the bathroom is marble and, as I told you, the body was butchered in the bathroom. Rolling from the bath to the front door would have been no problem.”

“And the hallway carpet?”

“The rich are like you and me, Inspector, only smarter, more devious. They don’t let carpeting stand in their way.”

“Anything else I need to see, before you tell me what you left out in your first rendition of what was in that folder?”

“You have seen all. Shall we return to the living room to sit? You take the couch. I’ll take the desk chair.”

“And the red leather one?”

“I prefer to let it rest in peace.”

8

“So, you intend to stay with this case. You have a dogged nature; that much is clear from the way you looked at Lulu.”

It was hard not to look at Lulu. She occupied most of the field of vision. “I don’t like the smell of things.” I also didn’t like the couch. The cushions were made of concrete.

Luís sighed. “All right, I have a few more things to tell you.”

“You mean you have another version to unload?”

“Not entirely. Simply adding a layer of detail may prove to you that there is no need for you to remain in Macau. It really is a click-clack case.”

“Click-clack.”

“Open and shut. File and forget. Up the chimney and out to sea.” He pondered his next move. “We know what happened. We know who did it. The people who viewed the tapes see no crack for the daylight of doubt to enter. All we lack is a confession. Or rather, all we lack is a signature. The confession we have already written.”

“Really? We tend to wait awhile to write it out.”

“The murderer checked into the hotel at six thirty P.M. the ninth of October, a Sunday, under the name of Raoul Penza, having passed through Immigration ninety minutes earlier. He had arrived on the four P.M. ferry from Hong Kong, with a super-class ticket purchased at the ferry terminal earlier in the morning, around ten A.M. On the ferry, he refused the food tray with a gracious nod and dozed.”

“Don’t drown me in extraneous details, Luís. It takes ten minutes to get from the ferry terminal to here, but it took him an hour and a half. Surely, he didn’t have to wait in line that long at Immigration. Perhaps it was even arranged so that he didn’t have to wait in line at all.” I paused; Luís filled the space with nothing but a blank stare. “He stopped somewhere?”

“That is our feeling as well.”

“Meaning you have no idea where.”

“Not yet. I can tell you it was not at one of the large casinos.”

“The boys in the orange coats are sure of that?”

“They are.”

“What about a small casino?”

“There are establishments, and then there are establishments. In any case, to resume, Senhor Penza was definitely downstairs in the lobby at six thirty P.M. He gave his home address as Residencia Julia Calle Six, Number Twenty-four, at Fourteenth Street, Isabelita, Santo Domingo.”

“He wasn’t preregistered?”

“No, he did not have a reservation. May I continue?”

“Claro, sim.”

“You speak Portuguese like a Russian, Inspector.” Luís thumbed through a small notebook. “There is such an address. In fact, there is also a Raoul Penza in Santo Domingo. He is a baker at a place called De la Casa Pain, and he has never applied for a passport. So right away, we know we have a little problem, wouldn’t you agree?”

There it was again-the “little problem.” I wasn’t about to agree to anything. “Not to get off track, but I like to fill in the details as things move along. It saves time later. Who checked him in?”

“The desk clerk was an intelligent young woman, named Lilley Li.” He turned the page of the notebook. “She is observant, good memory, single, witty, and lithe.”

“One of us should propose.”

“One of us should.”

“And what does lithe Lilley remember?”

“Our man wanted a room overlooking the blessed ruins of St. Paul’s. He was not looking for anything ostentatious-a kitchen, a bedroom, a bathroom with plenty of hot water, and a balcony. Lilley told him she could satisfy some of his needs.”

“Lilley, darling,” I said, “you should be more careful.”

“She was, actually. She wisely pushed the signal for the Assistant Manager to appear.”

“And he did?”

“When summoned, the self-important Winston Woo brushes off his striped pants, pulls straight his cutaway jacket, slicks back his oily hair, and sallies forth. He greets Senhor Penza with a cold smile.” Again Luís turned the page-not hiding the fact that there were a few observations he did not wish to share as yet. “Young Penza nods to Lilley and says he is sure the hotel will do its best to accommodate his requirements.”

“Not his wishes. His requirements. As if he is used to being obeyed.”

“That is the word Lilley says he used, and Lilley would not lie.”

“I’m not saying the girl lied, Luís. Perhaps she misremembered a detail here, a detail there. Witnesses do that.”

The friendly air around Luís dissipated for a moment. “Not Lilley,” he said in a tone that gave no quarter. “The girl is a bulldog with details.” He flipped through the notebook, skipping over additional characteristics of the bulldog Lilley that I was not to know. “Ah, here! Our fellow signs up for five nights. He is very tired and hopes to rest. He is handsome and composed, does not appear nervous or ill at ease. He is unhurried, smiles at Lilley frequently. He melts her heart.”

“Lilley said that?”

“She didn’t have to, Inspector. I know her heart.” Luís stands and looks out the window for a moment. “Our man asks for a safe-deposit box-a detail you inquired about, I seem to recall. Only then does Senhor Penza turn to Winston, whose smile, Lilley recalls, is fixed on his face like a week-old slice of mango.” Pages turn in the notebook. “Yes, here is what I was looking for. The bell captain, an experienced source that pays attention whenever the Assistant Manager appears, notices that Penza has one suitcase, a Louis Vuitton. I told you it was expensive. More precisely, it was a Pegase 60.”

“Not very big. A 70 would be better for body parts, but it only has two wheels. You told me the body was in a four-wheeler.”

Luís whistled. “You know suitcases?”

“I’ve been around the block,” I said modestly, and shifted back to business. “Our man gets settled. Then what? Goes out for dinner? Gambles? Comes back drunk and collapses on this uncomfortable couch?”

It is clear that Luís is annoyed that I have interrupted his fable. “None of the above. For three nights and three days, he does not leave his room. No movies. No room service. Nothing from the minibar. The DO NOT DISTURB sign is lit the whole time, so no maid service. No visitors.”

“You know that? I mean, no visitors?”

“In this hotel, on this floor, they make it a point to know such things. His door never opened.”

“He must have eaten something. Maybe he brought his own food. You could pack quite a meal in a Pegase 60.”

“He had tea. In fact, he used all of the hotel tea bags along with two bottles of water.”

“You said nothing from the minibar, I thought.”

“These were not the fake Evians from the refrigerator. These were the tap water in the bottles kept on the shelf above the bar. The maid says that when she was finally allowed in on the fourth morning-Thursday-he had gone through all of the towels, even the little ones, but had not even rumpled the bedsheets. No one was ever in the bed as far as she could tell, and she can tell plenty. This maid has been around the block, as you put it.”

“In sum, for three nights, he was a monk. No phone calls?”

“None.”

“Maybe he used a cell phone.”

“Maybe he tied a string to a soup can. Yes, or maybe he stood at the window and used semaphore flags to talk to a long-lost relative. Anything is possible, Inspector, in your world as in mine. But he did not use a cell phone, inegavelmente!” I figured that meant I wasn’t supposed to ask how he knew, so I didn’t. “Moreover, Senhor Penza left instructions with the front desk that he was not to be disturbed. I neglected to tell you that?”

“One of the details you skipped over. You merely mentioned that he said he was tired.”

Luís gave me a charming smile. “There was a message left for him the first night, but they held it at the concierge’s desk until he came back to earth. They wait for the DO NOT DISTURB light to go off before they deliver messages. They don’t even slip them under the door. Some people are sensitive to the sound of paper on marble.”

“Did he ever get the message?”

“Yes, he did. On the day he left.”

“Is that why he got nervous, changed plans, wanted to rent a car?”

“One can speculate. Before you ask, the reason he didn’t get it on the fourth day was that the concierge forgot to give it to him. Sad but true, a gap in the Great Wall of service. I’m told it has been plugged.”

“Very convenient. Do we know who the concierge worked for?”

“You mean, other than the hotel? No, but we’re looking into it.”

“You know, of course, what the message said.”

He scratched his head and looked in his notebook. “ ‘Hurry up, hurry up cows.’ That was in English, incidentally.”

“Any idea what it meant?”

“Furious research is underway.”

“To review. So far, we have a Dominican monk drinking tea, sleeping on the floor or in the bath.”

“With a forged passport.”

“I said a monk, not an angel. On the next day, day four? No, wait a minute. Back to the message, how was it delivered to the hotel? Phone?”

“By messenger service. They said it was dropped off in the office around nine P.M. by a middle-aged woman, Asian, nothing special that they could recall. She wore a scarf of some sort. We’re looking, but I don’t think it will be a fruitful search. There are many such women.”

“Well, they can’t all be Lilley or Lulu, Luís.”

“Alas.”

“So, what we can assume is that someone knew the phony baker was in this hotel within a few hours of his registering.”

“An assumption, but not a bad one.” From his expression, it was clear he hadn’t considered this before.

“Let’s return to day four.”

“He goes out early, smiles at everyone, gives a tip to the doorman. He doesn’t come back until ten thirty at night.”

“Where was he all day?”

“We’re checking.”

“It’s been more than two weeks. Macau is a small place. You’re still checking?”

“In the glory days, we followed people as regularly as you breathe, Inspector. In olden times, we had staff. Now, we only do it if there’s a reason.”

“And a forged passport isn’t a reason?”

“It is, unless it isn’t.”

No sense in going through that door. “You would know if he went to a casino anytime on day four?”

“We would.”

“He didn’t.”

“Again, none of the big ones. As I’ve suggested to you, those are well covered-staff, cameras, whatever. However, there are a few other places, more private. He might have been to one of those.”

“But you don’t think so.”

“I have an open mind.”

“Maybe he went to church and prayed all day? Maybe he left the island?”

“There is a single report of someone of his description arriving on the ferry from Hong Kong Airport, the last one of the evening.”

“Very vague. No follow-up?”

“The ferry was unusually crowded. That Thursday night, a lot of people came in. Plus, the schedule had been disrupted; an earlier boat had engine problems, so they were pressed to overload the final one.”

“Lucky it didn’t capsize.”

“Lucky.”

“No record of him coming through Immigration? Shouldn’t be hard to find a Dominican passport.”

“He could have used more than one. People do, I hear.” Again, the charming smile. “At eleven fifteen that night, he had a visitor.”

“At last.”

“A Russian.”

“Tall.” I didn’t want it to be the girl I’d met coming down the stairs.

“Seemingly. Well dressed, wearing a coat and a hat and very, very good high heels. It was a chilly evening and had started to rain soon after he returned.”

“You know this was a Russian because…”

“She spoke Russian.”

“Someone heard her?”

“She was overheard, yes.” Luís’s eyes searched the room.

“You have her picture?”

“No. Well, yes, a passport picture was recovered. It had been in the water for several days.”

“In the water. Something else you skipped over.” Kim had mentioned it to me; Luís had not.

“You can imagine it was not in the best shape. We can restore it partially, mostly around the edges. We think someone may have scratched out the nose.”

“How was this visit arranged? He called her?”

“No calls. Maybe he met her somewhere during the day and issued an invitation. Maybe they were old friends.”

“I see. An old high-heeled friend waltzed through the lobby at eleven fifteen at night, took the elevator to the executive floor, and no one stopped her? Some security.”

“There are other entrances, other ways. Not everyone wants it known they have such visitors. It could be a problem for some people, I suppose. Besides, eleven fifteen at night is like noon around here.”

“And the next time she is seen, it is in a Pegase 60, or some suitcase, in pieces?”

“Almost.” Luís rubbed his hands together until I thought his long fingers would burst into flames.

“There’s more.”

“Some.”

Luís was not, I could tell from the look on his face, prepared to be much more forthcoming than that. Neither of us said anything, which defeated the purpose of all the soundproofing. Finally, I decided to jump in.

“I heard the woman showed up in pieces a week ago. That she was carried in a matched set of luggage through the hotel lobby at seven A.M., dumped in the harbor in a four-wheeler, a red Lancel which floated for a few days before being picked up by the police, who were tipped off by a Japanese camera crew waiting there to film the whole thing and ask a lot of embarrassing questions. True?”

All right, I added the detail about the Lancel. Major Kim had said the bigger suitcase was red, and I’d seen a red Lancel once at a train station in Paris being pulled along by a tall woman with long legs. You don’t forget a suitcase like that. I figured it couldn’t hurt to wave something specific in front of Luís. Maybe he would tell me I was wrong and let slip a few details. One thing I already knew-the bigger suitcase wasn’t a Louis Vuitton, because Louis didn’t want anything to do with four-wheelers. That wouldn’t have stuck out, except Kim had told me that the murderer had carried out the body in a matched set of luggage. Luís hadn’t mentioned anything like that. Something was beginning not to add up.

Luís seemed to be wondering about the addition, too. He looked puzzled. “I don’t know where you got that, Inspector, but it’s not even close.”

“Which part do I have wrong?”

“This is an open investigation.”

“I thought you said it was an open-and-shut case.”

“We’re still on the open part.”

“One thing we haven’t discussed-Penza. What’s your interest in him?”

“He is a murderer, Inspector. Isn’t that enough?”

“Yes, murder is usually more than enough. Apart from that, I mean. This case has odd crosscurrents. From what you say, there are a lot of questions still unanswered, and yet you already have a confession waiting to be signed. I have to wonder what’s behind this. That a person has bad taste in hotel rooms isn’t a crime, is it?” I stood up. “My best to Lulu.”

Luís put the notebook back in his pocket. “If you get to De la Casa Pain, please give Senhor Penza my regards.” We shook hands. “The elevator is to your left as you exit. Why don’t you relax for a couple of days, take in a show? Go out to the Venetian. Everything there is first class. I know the manager.” Luís looked up at the ceiling. “He is an old friend, from before the regulations.”

“Old friends are like doors, isn’t that what they say?” I nearly tripped on the hallway carpet on my way out.