The water rat of Wanchai al-1

by Ian Hamilton

  “Okay, you happy?” Antonelli said.

  “One last thing,” she said slowly. “Money. Do you have access to the money?”

  “No,” he said. “That’s all Jackson.”

  “Has he sent you money?”

  “He sends me money every month, but just enough to cover my overheads, my expenses.”

  “You don’t profit-share?”

  “We have a seventy-thirty split, and you don’t have to guess who gets the seventy. Normally we wait till year-end, around Christmas, before we dip into it. By then we know how much we actually have. You know, there are a lot of fucking ups and downs in our business.”

  “So it seems.”

  “And you could be one big fucking down.”

  “Let’s hope,” she said, standing. She put the notebook and the envelope back in her purse. “Thanks for your help.”

  “What I hope is that I never hear your fucking voice again,” he said.

  “The feeling is mutual.”

  (14)

  Antonelli’s description of Guyana began to fade the moment Ava went online to find a flight to Georgetown. The most obvious carrier, she thought, would be a national airline. Every country has one. Except Guyana — theirs had gone bankrupt in 2001. And then there had been another, quasi-national one that went broke as well.

  The predominant carrier that flew to Guyana was Caribbean Airlines, and all its inbound flights originated in Port of Spain, Trinidad. The best way to get to Port of Spain was through New York or Miami. She knew that Thai Air had a direct flight from Bangkok to New York. It left at midnight and got into New York in the late afternoon. There was a flight to Port of Spain at 7 p.m. She would have to overnight in Port of Spain and catch a morning flight to Guyana.

  She checked the seating availability in business class; all the flights were wide open. She emailed her travel agent to arrange the flights and book her into the best hotels she could find.

  Checkout time at the Hyatt was noon. She called downstairs and negotiated a late checkout for half the normal daily rack rate.

  Ava had missed two phone calls while working online, one from Arthon and the other from Uncle. She phoned Arthon. He was pleased, if a bit surprised, that things had gone so well. She told him to keep a set of the photos in case they were needed. He said he had been going to anyway, and she wondered what that implied for Antonelli.

  When she called Uncle, he asked her how it had gone with Antonelli. That was his way of letting her know he was always in the loop, and that indeed it was his loop.

  She described her meeting in detail.

  “Where is this Guyana?” he asked.

  “What, you don’t have friends there?”

  “I won’t know that until I know where the place is.”

  “It’s in South America. On the northeast coast, surrounded by Suriname, Brazil, and Venezuela, and a stone’s throw from Trinidad. And I know that only because I looked it up.”

  “This is encouraging,” he said, meaning that she had located Seto. Geography was lost on him.

  “Do you want to say anything to Tam’s uncle?”

  “No, not until you have the money,” Uncle said. “Ava, where you are at the Hyatt, the Erawan Shrine is right next to you.”

  “It is.”

  “Go there, will you? Light some incense, leave some flowers, make a donation, and pray for us all.”

  “I didn’t know you were a Buddhist.”

  “I’m not, but neither is the shrine. It is actually Hindu, and it is devoted to the Thai version of Brahma — I can never remember his Thai name — and his elephant, whose name I do remember, but only because of the hotel. It’s Erawan.”

  “I’ll go.”

  “Good. It’s a lucky shrine. I’ve been there twice, and both times the results were more than I could have hoped for.”

  The shrine was on the corner of Ratchadamri Road, one of the busiest corners in one of the busiest cities in the world. The area was large, about twenty metres square, and was fenced, so Ava had to squeeze in through a gate. Even at one in the afternoon, with the sun at its peak, the shrine was filled almost to overflowing with concentric circles of worshippers standing around the statues of the six-armed Brahma and his elephant.

  Ava bought a garland of flowers, an orange, and three incense sticks. She placed the flowers and the orange at Brahma’s feet, where hundreds of gifts already lay. She lit the incense, held it in between her palms in the wai position, and began to pray, rocking gently back and forth, her lips moving, her words gentle.

  It was mainly Thais who were praying. The tourists stood on the outskirts, taking photos of the worshippers and the troupe of Thai dancers who performed there every day, dancing to please Brahma so that he in turn would be kind to the supplicants.

  Ava prayed for more than five minutes, naming all the members of her family and her closest friends. She asked for health and happiness, repeating the words like a mantra. When she had finished, she felt at peace. She put a hundred-baht note in the dancers’ collection urn and returned to the hotel.

  Since it was a Saturday the hotel had a couple of weddings booked. She couldn’t move through the lobby without bumping into someone wearing a uniform or a gown. She figured that only people affiliated with the police or the military could afford to get married at the Hyatt. Their base pay was meagre, but the perks and kickbacks made up for it. Uncle said he had never met a retired police officer who wasn’t a millionaire. She assumed that the same applied to the military.

  If she had been feeling more sociable she could have quizzed Arthon about how it all worked. He had been pretty blase about picking up contributions from casinos that weren’t supposed to exist. She had heard that the street beggars worked like franchises, being assigned a specific spot to work their pathos and kicking back half their proceeds to the police. There wasn’t a bar in the city that didn’t contribute to the police pension fund. Every stolen car ended up being either sold or cannibalized by a special cop squad. The money moved upstream in an established and fully controlled pattern.

  Still, she loved Thailand. Organized corruption was always superior to corruption with no rules. Uncle avoided doing business in places such as the Philippines and India and parts of China for that very reason.

  Back in her room Ava switched on her computer and began a search on Guyana. This was new territory: a place in the world where Uncle’s extensive network did not reach. Very quickly she deduced that George Antonelli hadn’t been exaggerating all that much, if at all. The country — officially the Cooperative Republic of Guyana — had a population of about 800,000 people, most of them huddled along a sixty-kilometre strip of coastline, and a per capita income of less than $1,200. That ranked it 155th in the world, and she hadn’t even heard of many of the countries that came in lower.

  The country had one airport, with only a handful of airlines flying into it. It had no passenger railway. It did have more than eight thousand kilometres of road, but only about six hundred kilometres were actually paved, and on those it seemed that potholes were as prevalent as tarmac. A diesel-generated power grid provided about sixty percent of the country’s actual needs; blackouts were a scheduled daily occurrence. She made a note to buy a flashlight. The water quality was also iffy. She made a note to buy water purification pills.

  The population was predominantly East Indian, the descendants of indentured servants. But there was also a very large black population, the descendants of slaves. The two groups had a long history of antagonism. The rest were remnants of the original Carib Indians, a tiny group identified as European, and a small group of Chinese. The country had a remarkably high crime rate but also boasted one of the world’s tallest wooden structures, an Anglican cathedral.

  All in all, it didn’t sound like a holiday destination.

  Ava called downstairs to the concierge and told him she needed to buy a flashlight and some water purification pills. He told her she would find everything she needed at CentralWorld.


  The shopping complex is on Ratchadamri Road almost kitty-corner from the Erawan Shrine, a five-minute walk from the hotel. CentralWorld is eight storeys high, and with more than half a million square metres of shopping space, it is the world’s third-largest shopping complex. Ava found what she wanted, but only after a half-hour hunt.

  Her shopping done, she settled in at the mall for her first full Thai meal since her arrival. She had just ordered when her cellphone rang. The caller was using a number blocker. She answered, since not many people had her number — only those she actually wanted to have it.

  “Ava, this is Andrew Tam.” He sounded nervous. “My uncle hasn’t been able to get hold of your uncle. He is concerned about how things are proceeding.”

  “Andrew, please tell your uncle that when I’m on a case, I don’t give my uncle daily updates. It’s like I told you: when I have something to report, I’ll call.”

  “It’s getting quite tense around here. I’m under tremendous pressure from my family. I also have a meeting with my bank next week, and they’re going to be asking some awkward questions. I’m not a very good liar.”

  “So this is about you, not your uncle.”

  “I am worried.”

  “Andrew, I have located the money. I know where it is. Now I have to go and get it. That sounds easier than it might turn out to be, which is why I haven’t called you. Until I actually have the money, I have nothing and you have nothing.”

  “You’ve found it!” he said, grasping at the good news and ignoring the caveats.

  “I have.”

  “Fantastic.”

  “Not until I get it.”

  “This is a great start, though, isn’t it? I mean — ”

  “Andrew, stop,” she said. “Look, you can tell the bank and your uncle whatever you want. If you need to buy some time, do it. I have found the money and I’m going after it. That doesn’t mean anything until I get it. You do understand that? I’m not going to make any promises, I’m not going to give you timelines.”

  “Well, all I can say is that we believe in you.”

  She sighed. “What you mean is that you have no choice but to believe in me. That’s a different thing. You don’t know me, you don’t know me at all. I don’t like dealing in blind faith, which is why you haven’t heard from me, and which is why, Andrew, you will not hear from me again until I can tell you either that I have the money or that I can’t get the money. And when I say you won’t hear from me again, it also means that under no circumstances are you to call me again. Are we agreed?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Now, there is one thing I do need from you. I was going to relay it through Uncle but — since we’re talking already — I need your bank information. On the chance that I can get to the money, the best way to move it will be a wire transfer. So email me all the particulars from your bank. I’ll need the bank name and address, the account name and address, and the bank’s IBN number and its SWIFT.”

  “I’ll send it today.”

  “Tomorrow will be fine.”

  “Do you mind if I ask where the money actually is?”

  “I’ll call you when I have some hard information. Until then, try to relax.” She closed the phone.

  There were times when Ava disliked the way she had to act. Tam was a nice enough guy; he was just looking for any comforting news he could get. She had learned the hard way that clients who were desperate — and hers were nearly always desperate — heard what they wanted to hear. A glimmer of hope would become a done deal. And if by chance she didn’t deliver, all of a sudden she was the villain, the heartbreaker, the liar.

  When Ava got back to the hotel, she packed her bag and got ready to go to the airport. The travel agent had already booked and confirmed the flights by email. She had also put her into the Hilton Hotel in Port of Spain and the Phoenix in Georgetown, and had arranged for hotel limos to meet her when she landed.

  Ava smiled when she read the agent’s comment about the Phoenix: It has three stars, but every other hotel is one or two. What kind of place is this? But she didn’t smile when she read what followed: Every travel guide says to exercise extreme caution in Georgetown. Going out alone, even during the day, is not recommended.

  (15)

  Ava landed in Port of Spain right on schedule at 7 p.m. It was already dark. Trinidad is in the southernmost reaches of the Caribbean, and fifty-two weeks a year, the sun falls like a stone behind the western mountain range at 6 p.m. From the air and all lit up, the city looked bigger than she had imagined. She guessed it was also a hell of a lot prettier from where she sat than it was on the ground.

  She coasted through Immigration, Customs, and baggage claim, stepping out into air that was Thailand humid but filled with unfamiliar odours. Rotting leaves. Dead birds. Dog shit. Gas fumes. She couldn’t put a fix on it, but she nearly gagged. When Ava walked through the Arrivals gate, she saw a large black man standing at the curb in front of a Lincoln Continental. He was holding a sign with her name on it. She signalled to him, he opened the back door, and she climbed in.

  “That’s some smell,” she said.

  “Mainly dead vegetation,” he said.

  She didn’t need more detail. “How far to the hotel?”

  “About half an hour.”

  For once she hadn’t overslept on the plane. She had caught about eight hours en route to New York and that had been it. She was sleepy, which was good, because she wanted to be fresh the next day.

  “Are you here on vacation or business?” he asked.

  “Business.”

  “Staying long?”

  “Just overnight. Tomorrow I head for Guyana. My business is there.”

  “Guyana. That is… one… crazy… place,” he said.

  “Have you been?”

  “Don’t have to go to know. We hear the stories — there are always stories. Nothing works. Can’t trust no one. Can’t go out at night with even a ten-dollar watch on your wrist. We get some of them here, Guyanese. They come with suitcases filled with shrimp and go from hotel to hotel and restaurant to restaurant trying to sell it. As if the chef at the Hilton is going to buy shrimp from some guy selling it out of a suitcase.”

  “Someone must be buying it or they wouldn’t keep coming,” she said.

  He looked at her in his rear-view mirror to see if she was making fun of him. Ava wasn’t laughing.

  “The only good thing about Guyana is that it makes the rest of us in the Caribbean look good. No matter what kind of stunts our politicians pull or how many drug dealers we have or how bad our crime is, it’s always worse in Guyana.”

  She knew that Port of Spain sat on the Caribbean Sea, but as they began to work their way along the highway into the city she could see no sign of it. She rolled down her window and listened. Nothing. “Where’s the sea?” she asked.

  The driver pointed left to a row of what looked like warehouses and abandoned factories. “It’s there, behind those buildings.”

  On her right house lights glimmered weakly above a large brick wall that flanked the highway for at least two kilometres. “That’s the wall of shame,” the driver said, noting her interest.

  “It isn’t a sound barrier?”

  “More like a sight barrier. That’s Beetham Estate behind the wall, our biggest slum. You’ll find squatters, shacks, people who live on scraps. Not a place to wander into. The government built the wall just before the Summit of the Americas was held here so the foreign dignitaries wouldn’t have to look at Beetham on the way into the city. Building the wall was cheaper and quicker than doing anything about the slum. Hide it, pretend it isn’t there. Mind you, not many taxi drivers are complaining. It used to be that if your car broke down on this part of the road the animals from Beetham would be on you in two minutes. Now with the wall it takes them a bit longer.”

  As they drove into the city, office towers, hotels, and small shopping complexes emerged from the night. Most of them were to the right of the
highway, away from the sea. What kind of place is this? Ava thought. In Hong Kong, any kind of waterfront view, no matter how slight, drove up the real estate prices. Here it was as if they had decided they needed to distance themselves from the Caribbean.

  The driver left the highway, turned right, and cut uphill through a series of narrow streets lined with houses and shops only a sidewalk away. It was a bumpy ride. Many of the streets were cobblestoned, and the driver had to come almost to a complete halt to navigate deep V-shaped trenches cut across the roadway.

  At the top of the hill the road opened onto a broad expanse and the driver began to circle what was obviously a park. There was only a half-moon and not all the street lights were working, but as they drove along Ava was taken aback by the scale and variety of architecture they passed. “This is the Savannah, the Queen’s Park Savannah,” he said, meaning the park. “Used to play cricket here every Sunday, but now I just come for Carnival.”

  “What about these buildings?” Ava asked.

  “That’s All Saints’ Church, and over there is the American embassy.”

  “No, I mean those,” Ava said, pointing to a row of mansions that looked as if they belonged in a Victorian-era London neighbourhood.

  “The Magnificent Seven, we call them. They were built over a hundred years ago by European businessmen who were all trying to outdo each other. That one there is now the president’s house, and the rest I really don’t know,” the driver said.

  They continued around the circle to get to the Hilton, which was adjacent to the Savannah and close to the Royal Botanic Gardens. The hotel’s curious hillside structure was reflected in the interior. The lobby at the front of the hotel was on the ground floor, and Ava’s room at the rear, which still had a view of the lights encircling the Savannah, was two floors below. Aside from the architectural eccentricity, when she opened the door to her room she found herself in a classic Hilton hotel room: clean, middle-class, dependable.