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.
First Week in September
by Jean Leslie
In Wyattsville the first week in September traditionally belongs to the Pioneer Society. Everyone dons a costume reminiscent of the early days when the town was the last wagon-train stop on the way to the gold fields, the men grow beards, and there is a kangaroo court held on the lawn in front of the courthouse. The real feature, though, is the rodeo. It draws such a big crowd that any one visitor goes unnoticed. No one paid any attention to a Mrs. John Metcalf who registered at the Californian on September third and checked out on the seventh, the day that Andy Wyatt put a gun in his mouth and blew off the top of his head.
Had he been questioned (which he wasn’t) the desk clerk at the hotel might have remembered Mrs. Metcalf as a soft-spoken middle-aged woman who asked a lot of questions about the town’s history. It is possible that old Mr. Pruitt, owner of the variety store, and Miss Tait, an elderly saleswoman in the Emporium, also would have recalled her. Both had given her a great deal of information about the leading citizens of the community, especially those who bore the Wyatt name. These seemingly casual conversations were forgotten in light of the shocking news of Andy Wyatt’s suicide. No one — then, or later — associated her presence in Wyattsville with his death.
My first knowledge of Mrs. Metcalf came on the morning of September sixth when Velma put through a call to my desk. I heard her say, “Mr. Wyatt is out, ma’am. I will connect you with his secretary.” A pleasant voice said, “Hello? Will Mr. Wyatt be in his office later today? I would like to make an appointment to see him.”
Wyattsville isn’t really “small town” any more, but most of us act as though it were, so it was quite natural for me to volunteer the information that Friday was Kid’s Day at the rodeo and Mr. Wyatt would be staying for the whole program because he had two sons and five nephews entered in the various events. To make up for lost time, I said, he would be in his office Saturday and could see her at five o’clock. She had to be content with this, and I noted the time of her appointment on my desk pad and on Andy’s.
Those Wyatt boys took a total of eight firsts, three seconds, and five thirds, and the biggest barbecue in town that night was at Andy and Laura Lee’s home where there were more than forty men, women, and children, not one of whom wasn’t a Wyatt by birth or marriage.