A Lotus for Miss Quon Read online

  From what Wade had said, he wouldn’t be using the car tonight, but where was he? He knew he was holed up somewhere with the Chinese girl, but how could he find him?

  He asked Nhan if she knew the girl and he described her.

  “Yes, I know her,” Nhan said, puzzled. “She dances at L’Arc-en-Ciel. Her name is Ann Fai Wah. She makes a lot of money going with Americans. She isn’t a good girl.”

  “Do you know where she lives?”

  Nhan thought for a moment then she said the had an idea the girl had an apartment off Hong Thap Tu.

  Jaffe got to his feet.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  She stared blankly up at him.

  “You want to see Ann Fai Wah?” she asked indignantly. “Why? I will not go with you to that woman.”

  “Come on, come on,” Jaffe said impatiently. “I’ll explain on the way.”

  As he drove to the centre of the town, he explained about Wade’s car.

  “You’ll have to drive it back, Nhan. Do you think you can manage?”

  He had taught her to drive the Dauphine and she handled the small car very well, but he had no idea if she could cope with the big Chrysler.

  She said firmly and with confidence that she would be able to drive the Chrysler.

  They found the big car parked outside a block of luxury flats down a quiet, tree-lined road.

  Jaffe told Nhan to wait in the Dauphine and he went over to the Chrysler. As he expected the doors were firmly locked and the windows up. He would have to get the keys from Wade and get his permission to use the car. He hoped Wade wasn’t already in the sack with the Chinese girl.

  He entered the block and learned from the indicator board the girl’s apartment was on the fourth floor. He went up in the lift and as he paused outside her front door he glanced at his watch. The time was ten minutes past eleven.

  He listened and thought he could hear faint dance music. He thumbed the bell and waited. There was a long pause, then he rang the bell again.

  The front door opened on a chain and the Chinese girl looked inquiringly at him. He saw with relief that she was fully dressed. He smiled at her.

  “Sorry to intrude, but I want to speak to Sam,” he said. “It’s urgent.”

  He heard Wade, somewhere out of sight, say, “What the hell? Here, get out of the way, baby.”

  The door pushed to, the chain was released and Wade appeared in the doorway, scowling.

  The girl, with an elaborate shrug of her shoulders, went into the inner room and closed the door.

  Wade looked a little drunk. He glared blearily at Jaffe.

  “What the hell do you want?” he demanded. “How did you know I was here?”

  “You told me - remember?” Jaffe said. “Sorry to bust in like this but I’m in a fix. Look, my damn car’s broken down. I’ve got a girl waiting and I’ve got to cart her out to the airport. Can I borrow your car? I’ll put it right back in a couple of hours.”

  “Why the hell don’t you take a taxi?”

  Jaffe gave him a sly grin.

  “You don’t and can’t do what I intend to do to this girl in a taxi, brother. Come on, be a sport or she’ll change her mind. I’d do the same for you.”

  Wade suddenly relaxed and matching Jaffe’s grin, he fished out his car keys.

  “You old sonofabitch,” he said. “Who is she? Anyone I know?”

  “I don’t think so, but if she’s any good, I’ll introduce you. That’s the least I can do.”

  You do that and take care of my car. I want it back here by seven tomorrow morning.”

  “Thanks, Sam, you’re a real pal.” Jaffe took the keys. “Okay in there?” He nodded towards the closed door of the inner room.

  “Looks all set,” Wade said, lowering his voice. “We’ve got to the dancing stage. Another hour should see me approaching the home base.”

  “Good luck and thanks again,” Jaffe said and moved to the lift.

  “Same to you,” Wade said, “and don’t forget that introduction.”

  He watched Jaffe descend out of sight in the lift, then he stepped back into the apartment and closed the door.

  Chapter Four

  1

  As Jaffe walked over to the Dauphine, Nhan looked anxiously at him through the open car window.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I’ve got the keys. Come on. We’ll leave my car right here.”

  She got out of the Dauphine and stood by his side while he wound up the windows and locked the door.

  “You’ll have to bring the Chrysler back here,” he said, putting his hand on her arm and hurrying her across the road to Wade’s car. “Do you think you’ll be able to find your way back here on your own?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good girl. It’s a dead easy car to drive.”

  He opened the door of the Chrysler and she slid across the bench seat to the far side and he got in under the steering wheel. He put the key in the ignition and explained to her how to start the car.

  “There’s nothing to it. The gears are automatic. You just shift this lever to drive, take off the brake and give her gas.”

  He moved the car from the kerb and started slowly down the road.

  “I’m going to drive past my place,” he told her. “Keep a look out on your side. If that girl’s gone, I want to get some clothes. I don’t know how long it’ll be before I can get away. I must have a change.”

  She didn’t say anything. She sat as if she were stunned. He looked sharply at her. Her face was a blank mask of misery.

  “Did you hear what I said?” he said sharply. “I’m relying on you, Nhan. If I’m going to get out of this mess, neither of us can make mistakes.”

  “I understand,” she whispered.

  It took a few minutes to reach the street where he lived. As he turned into the dimly-lit, tree-lined street, he said, “Watch out! You look right. I’ll look left. She’s wearing white.”

  As he passed his small villa, he saw the place was in darkness. He could see no sign of anyone.

  “Okay?” he asked, slowing down.

  “I saw no one.”

  He swung the car into a side street and pulled up.

  “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll walk back and have another look. If it’s still okay, I’ll go in and pack a bag. I won’t be longer than ten minutes. Just wait here.”

  He set off back to the corner where he paused to look down the long deserted street. Then walking quickly, aware that his heart was beginning to thump, he advanced towards his villa.

  He thought: this may be a stupid move. I could be walking into a trap. For all I know, that girl has called the police and they’ve found Haum and are waiting for me. But I’ve got to have a change of clothes and my shaving kit. I just don’t know how long I’ll be holed up in Thudaumot.

  As he approached his villa, he looked searchingly for the girl or Dong Ham, but the street was empty. He paused at the gates and again looked to right and left. Then he gently lifted the latch, pushed open the gate entered and closed the gate behind him. He walked silently up the drive and to the back of the villa. Here he paused, keeping in the shadows and looked across the courtyard to the servants’ quarters. No light showed. The door to the cookhouse was closed.

  He thought: they’ve got fed up with waiting. She’s gone home, and he’s gone to bed.

  He returned to the front door. Taking out his key, he unlocked the door and stepped into the stuffy darkness. He shut and locked the door, then paused to listen. There came “no sound to alarm him, and without turning on the light, he groped his way up the stairs and to his bedroom. The door was locked as he had left it. He inserted the key, pushed open the door and paused to listen. The cold air from the air-conditioner came out and greeted him, cooling his sweating face. He entered the room, shut the door and turned on the light. The room was exactly as he had left it, and he grinned sheepishly as he realized how frightened he had been on the way up the dark stairs.

  He looked at
the clothes closet. His clothes were in there and so was Haum. This was no time to be squeamish. The quicker he got out of the villa and back to the Chrysler, the better.

  He took a leather and canvas holdall from the top of the closet and tossed it on the bed. Then he went into the bathroom, collected his toilet kit, soap and two towels which he put in the holdall. From his chest of drawers, he took handkerchiefs, socks and three shirts. As he picked the shirts out of the drawer, he saw the gun. He looked at it for a long moment, startled.

  He had bought this gun from a newspaper man who had been in Saigon during the early air raids. He had told Jaffe he had taken the gun from a soldier who had been killed by bomb blast.

  “I’m going home now,” the “newspaper man said. “You never know in this place. A gun can come in very handy. You can have it for twenty bucks.”

  Jaffe had bought it. He had never anticipated having to use it, but at that time hand grenades were still occasionally being thrown and everyone was still pretty jumpy and it seemed the sensible thing to do to buy the gun.

  He picked up the gun and balanced it in his hand. It was loaded, but he had no idea if it would be in working order after all this time. He was suddenly glad he owned the gun. In the spot he was now in, a gun might be very useful. He put it in the holdall, then with a conscious effort, he went over to the clothes closet, took out the key and unlocked the door.

  He kept his eyes up so he didn’t see Haum on the floor, but he was aware of the faint but unmistakable smell of death, and he felt slightly sick.

  Hurriedly, he grabbed from the clothes rack a dark tropical suit, khaki drill trousers and a khaki drill coat-shirt. He shut the closet door and locked it.

  He folded the clothes and put them in the holdall. He was now ready to leave. He picked up the holdall and left the room, turning off the light. He paused to lock the door, then he groped his way into the darkness.

  The contrast between his cold bedroom and the oven-heat of the hall brought him out into a violent sweat. He suddenly needed a drink and that reminded him he had a bottle of Scotch which might come in useful.

  He entered the sitting-room and turned on the light. It was while he was putting the nearly-full bottle of whisky into the holdall, after a quick drink, he became aware of the sound of voices in the street.

  Hastily zipping up the holdall, he stepped to the window and peered through the shutters. What he saw gave him a paralysing shock.

  Under the dim light of the street lamp, standing close together and looking at the villa, was Haum’s fiancée and a policeman.

  The girl was pointing to the sitting-room window and Jaffe realized they could see the light coming through the shutters. The girl was talking excitedly, making chopping movements with her left hand while she continued to point with her right.

  The policeman slouched at her side, his thumbs hooked into his gun belt, looking from her to the villa and back to her again.

  Jaffe watched them, his heart now pounding violently.

  For some minutes the girl continued to talk, but Jaffe, watching the policeman, realized she wasn’t making any headway. This wasn’t surprising, Jaffe thought, slightly relaxing. She was urging this little man to enter property belonging to an American and the policeman was thinking this could spark off an international incident with him on the receiving end of trouble.

  Suddenly the policeman turned on the girl and began to jabber fiercely at her. Jaffe could hear his harsh voice raised in anger, but he had no idea what he was saying.

  His words, however, had a startling effect on the girl. She cowered away from the policeman and by her gestures, Jaffe guessed she was trying to excuse herself. The policeman continued to berate her until with a further outburst of words, he motioned her violently to go away.

  She looked once more at the villa, then turning, she began to walk reluctantly down the street while the policeman, nibbling at his chin-strap, glared after her.

  Jaffe drew in a long breath of relief. He watched the policeman pull out his notebook and begin to write laboriously in the book. Having completed his notes, the policeman stood on the edge of the kerb and stared at the villa.

  Jaffe wondered what Nhan was doing. He had now been gone over twenty minutes. He hoped she wouldn’t panic and show herself. How long was this goddam monkey going to stand staring? Suppose he walked up the street, spotted the tail-lights of the Chrysler and poked his head into the car? He would give Nhan such a scare, she would probably have hysterics, and he would guess something was wrong.

  Jaffe was just wondering if he should slip out the back way, climb the wall and get to Nhan through his neighbour’s garden when the policeman seemed to lose interest in the villa, and turning, he slouched off down the street, following the direction of the girl and going away from the Chrysler.

  Jaffe snatched up the holdall, turned off the light and let himself out into the dark garden. He locked the front door, then went cautiously to the gate and looked down the road. He could just make out the white figure of the policeman still moving away from him, and opening the gate, he ran silently to the Chrysler.

  Nhan was standing in a tense attitude beside the Chrysler, looking towards him as he rounded the corner. He waved her back into the car, but she waited until he reached her.

  “It’s okay,” he said, tossing the holdall into the back of the car. “Sorry I was so long. Come on, get in. We’ve got to get moving.”

  “I thought something terrible had happened to you,” she said in a quavering voice as he bustled her into the car. “Oh, Steve! I’m frightened! If only you would go to the police! I’m sure…”

  “Don’t start that again!” he said as he started the car. “I know what you’re doing. I’ve got to get out of Vietnam!” He drove fast down the street, heading out of town. “Do you think I can trust Blackie Lee to help me? You know him better than I do. Would he be likely to give me away to the police?”

  She wrung her hands.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about him!”

  Exasperated, he thought: why should she know anything about anything that could possibly help me? She’s just a beautiful brainless doll! Damn it! I might just as well ask advice from a child!

  Immediately he realized the injustice of this. Wasn’t she taking him to a hiding place and wasn’t she returning Wade’s car? Without her he would be in a hell of a fix.

  He put his hand down on hers and patted it.

  “Relax, kid. It’ll work out all right. In a couple of months when we are in Hong Kong, we’ll be laughing about it.”

  “Oh no! We’ll never laugh about it. Never!”

  He shrugged his shoulders. She was probably right, he thought but he wished she didn’t sound as if the end of the world was at hand.

  “There’s one important thing you have to watch out for, Nhan. When the news breaks, Blackie will remember you spent this night with me. He’ll probably question you. There’s just a chance even the police will question you. You are to say I drove you to the river and talked to you for a couple of hours. You know that place where we go sometimes: where that old sunken junk is? That’s where we went. I drove you home around eleven and left you. Will you remember that? It’s a story they can’t check.”

  She nodded. She was twisting a rag of a handkerchief in her fingers, and glancing at her, Jaffe thought despairingly: she will make a hopeless liar. No one will believe her.

  “For God’s sake, Nhan, don’t let them trap you into telling them where I shall be hiding,” he said roughly.

  “I’ll never tell anyone! Never!” She stiffened and spoke fiercely. “No one will ever make me tell!”

  “And another thing; you mustn’t tell anyone about the diamonds; not even your grandfather. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure your grandfather will help me?”

  “He is wise and kind and he would never do anything to make me unhappy,” she said proudly. “When I tell him we love each other,
he will help you.”

  Jaffe thought irritably: if he’s all that wise, he’ll guess you’re my mistress and he’ll probably hate my guts and run to the police.

  As if reading his thoughts, she said quietly, “It will be necessary to explain to him that shortly we are going to be married. When we arrive in Hong Kong, it is better for us to be married, don’t you think, Steve?”

  This rather jarred Jaffe. He had never seriously thought of marriage after his first unhappy experience. He had been perfectly content to have Nhan as a mistress, but it had never occurred to him to marry her. Once he had sold the diamonds, he would be rich and he would be returning to America; a Vietnamese taxi dancer could be a hell of a hindrance in America, especially if she were his wife, but there was time to think about that: damn it! He wasn’t in Hong Kong yet! He hadn’t sold the diamonds yet!

  But he realized it might be fatal to his plans if her grandfather wasn’t told they were going to be married so he said lightly, “That’s right, Nhan. You tell him that, but I want to explain to him personally the trouble I’m in. You just tell him I want shelter. I’ll explain why. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.” She leaned against him, resting her small head on his shoulder. “I’m not so frightened now. Perhaps after all it will be all right.”

  She remained silent as if lost in a dream while Jaffe uneasy with his conscience, drove along the winding road where the rice fields, the odd thatched farmhouse on stilts and the occasional buffalo wallowing in swamp mud appeared and disappeared in the fast moving headlights of the Chrysler.

  2

  Four days previous to Jaffe’s discovery of the diamonds, three peasants, dressed in their working black with grimy rags tied around their heads as protection against the sun, squatted in a semi-circle before a little brown man, wearing khaki shorts and shirt who sat on the stump of a tree and talked earnestly to them.

  This man had come silently out of the forest and had entered the screened patch of ground where the young rice seedlings were sheltered from the wind. The three peasants who were working there had joined him immediately with a mixture of fear and excitement. They had seen him several times before. He was the leader of a guerrilla band of Viet Minh communists whose work was to spread alarm and despondency among the Vietnam farming community. Whenever he appeared, these three peasants, Ho Chi Minh sympathizers and indoctrined with a hatred for the Vietnam regime, knew he had a job for them.