I gave a soft whistle, trying to play it just as cool. "Maybe you can get the doctors to fix you up with a hook, Ray. A man with your hobbies wouldn't want to get caught shorthanded."
"Oh? What hobbies are those?"
"Wires and things. Timers? Things that can blow up in your face."
Tullock was toweling himself down. Gave me a pained expression— Fuck you—before saying to Suradi, "I suppose you're here to search my room."
"Yes. If this man want."
"You mind showing me the search warrant?"
Suradi was puzzled for a moment. "Oh! No need warrant. This man want, we search."
I got the impression that Tullock didn't care if we searched his room or not; was just playing a role. I wondered what kind of deal Rengat had worked with him. The little bastard had picked up my luggage right on time. Had probably reasoned that since I was flying out tonight, he no longer had a cause to fear me. So why not make some extra money? Could picture him telling Tullock, "All week, this big man follow you! You pay, I tell you more!"
Obviously, Tullock had paid. The question was: When had Rengat told him, and how much could he know?
To Lieutenant Suradi, Tullock said, "Tell me something. How are people who make false accusations treated in Sumatra? I'll cooperate, but I'll be damned if I'm going to let this guy get away with calling me a thief. I've got business interests in this country." Letting the cops know that he was an important man; a man with connections.
Suradi said, "It very serious, sahr. Yes, very serious. Mr. Ford wrong, maybe we take him to jail. You charge him, we do it, yes sahr." The little man was glaring at me, giving me one last chance to back down.
Tullock made a sweeping motion with his hand. "In that case," he said, "search all you want."
Suradi was still looking at me. I thought it over. Thought: What the hell. I nodded at the lieutenant. Said, "The man's a thief. Search his room."
Tullock had pulled on a dry T-shirt. He took a chair across from me, dabbing at his face with a towel as Suradi and Prajurit began to politely lift and poke their way through drawers and luggage. It was a large, sparsely furnished room. Hard brown linoleum floor, an open window that looked out over the city, off-white walls decorated only with two small paintings done in the gaudy colors of a cheap valentine card. Both paintings were weirdly abstract—one of a dark-faced girl, her hands extended in an Egyptian-like pose; the other was of a cart pulled by water buffalo. Cart and oxen—it caused the image of Hannah's face to flash into my mind.
"You tell me what you're looking for, maybe I can help." Tullock was sitting there, projecting indifference. His chair was against the open window. There was a floor lamp and a closet door to his left.
I told him, "You'll know when they find it," but I was thinking: If it starts to unravel, I'll shove him through the window.
"Ah-h-h," he said. "So it's going to be like that. I don't suppose you'd tell me when this supposed theft occurred?"
Suradi and Prajurit were leaving the conversation to us, just doing their jobs, not very happy about it.
"Yesterday," I said. "Late afternoon—just after the muezzin called the prayer."
"You mean that noise they blast over the streets?" Tullock had his legs crossed. He was a foot tapper—the only symptom of nervousness in the otherwise shielded demeanor of a bureaucrat who was probably seasoned by years of long meetings and public hearings. His foot continued to tap as he said, "In that case, I couldn't have done it, because that's when I take my daily run."
"Your running partner can confirm that?"
His foot slowed momentarily . . . then resumed its normal pace. "I had thousands of partners. Out there on the streets. They remember men who look like you and me, Ford. We all probably look alike to them."
Little did he know.
I said, "You were never alone, Ray? I seldom see anyone in the parks along the Deli River."
Tullock's foot began to lose speed . . . then stopped. He leaned toward me slightly and for a moment, just a moment, I could see the craziness that was in him. "You've made a terrible mistake, buddy. You have no idea just how deep the hole is you're digging—you should have done some reading before you came. I know about this country."
I said, "Ray, I've made mistakes that were a hell of a lot bigger than this. Mistakes I'm going to regret for the rest of my life. Like that bomb you left for me? I made a mistake and it ended up killing Hannah."
Slowly, very slowly, the color of his face changed from brown to red, and then to gray: Hawkeye's sidekick after hearing some shocking news. "You're . . . you're lying," he whispered.
"I wish I were. The mistake I made was not realizing just how scrambled your brain really is."
He had both feet on the linoleum now, both hands on the armrest. "She's not dead, she can't be dead. I put that thing—" He caught himself in time; realized that the two Indonesian cops had stopped their search and were listening. He sat back. "I don't know what the hell you're talking about."
"What I'm talking about, Ray, is what you stole from me." I used my head to gesture toward Lieutenant Suradi. In his hand he was holding the small opaque green ball that I had already described to him . . . and which I had just watched him remove from the open drawer of a dresser. To the lieutenant, I said, "That's it. He must have taken it from my room when I was out. It's extremely valuable."
"That's not his, it's mine! Don't you see what he's doing?" Tullock was on his feet now, beginning to lose it. Also getting some very hard looks from the cops. He forced himself to pause . . . took a very deep breath, fighting hard to recover. Actually managed to give Suradi a little smile as he said, "What if I prove that glass ball belongs to me? Will that make you happy?"
Lieutenant Suradi said in a chilly, formal voice, "He tell us it's here. We find it."
"But it was in my room all along! He's trying to make fools of you. I'll show you—" Tullock hustled over to his briefcase and pulled out a sheet of long pinkish paper, the color of a legal document in Sumatra. "I was expecting him to pull something like this. At the suggestion of my Japanese associates, I had their secretary list everything that I brought into the country. Everything I have in this room. See?" Tullock was showing them the paper. "It's listed right here. See this? 'Green glass ornament.' I carry it as a good luck charm." Gave the tone just the right inflection—an innocent admission of silliness made by an innocent man.
Now Suradi and Prajurit had turned their cold stares on me. My expression said, Oh, shit. . . .
Tullock pressed the advantage. "The man's trying to frame me. Look at his face! He's trying to set me up—"
"What's the date on that list?" I asked Suradi.
He checked it. "Dated . . . two . . . no, three days ago." I watched his eyes shift from the paper to me. "You robbed yesterday, sahr. That's what you say."
I thought about how nice it would be to shake Rengat by the neck.
"They could have postdated it. The date on that paper means nothing."
Tullock had made a full recovery now. "I'm afraid it's your word against mine, sport. My word and the word of my business associates. All very respectable Japanese businessmen." He slapped the paper. "Listed right here in black and white."
I stood, took the bandanna from my pocket and wiped the sweat from my forehead. "May I see the glass ball?"
Suradi hesitated, then handed it to me.
"I guess I could have made a mistake, but it's very similar." I motioned to the floor lamp. "Can you pull that over so I can see a little better?" I stuffed the bandanna back in my pocket as I held the sphere up to the light. The glass was so old and fogged that the light succeeded only in changing its color from black green to jade green. I pushed my glasses up on my head, inspecting more closely. Cleared my throat—couldn't hide my nervousness—then, after a long pause, I said, "I'm afraid I owe Mr. Tullock an apology. This definitely isn't the object that was stolen from me."