Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 35, No. 10, October 1990

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.