Chasing the Dragon: a story of love, redemption and the Chinese triads (Opium Book 2)

by Colin Falconer

  “I'm glad you called us, Michael. I think we may be able to help you with this.”

  ***

  “Keelan?”

  “Lace?” He sounded surprised. “Detective Lacey,” he added, more formally. “What can I do for you?”

  “I'm liaising. That's the procedure, isn't it?”

  “What did you want to liaise with me about?”

  “Li kam-chuen. Do you want the triple-C code?”

  “The one-armed fisherman?”

  “Are you still interested in him?”

  “I think McReadie is.”

  “I'll be sending him a fax. I thought I'd let you know as well, by way of maintaining good US-Hong Kong relations.”

  “And I thank you for that. Where is he?”

  “At the morgue. No firm ID as yet, but I'm stone cold certain. He was located in a planter box.”

  A long silence. “A planter box?”

  “Fishermen make very good fertilizer, apparently.”

  “Well, let us know when that's confirmed. If he’s dead and Eddie Lau is out of town, that just about shuts down our line of investigation.”

  “Another day, another deceased. I'll be seeing you.”

  “Lace ...” A long silence on the end of the line. “It doesn't matter.”

  She rang off.

  She had done all the liaising she intended to do with Lieutenant John Keelan. An intriguing man for an American, but whatever skeletons he had rattling around in his cupboard he was just too much like damned hard work.

  ***

  McReadie and Keelan met in Nickleby's, a piano bar under the Wharney Hotel. McReadie was sitting at the bar, ogling the two Filipina singers on the stage. He saw Keelan and waved him over. “Beer?”

  “Carslberg,” Keelan said. The band was playing ‘Without You.’ “Good voices,” he said.

  “Really? I never noticed.”

  “Lacey tell you about Li kam-chuen?”

  “I heard. A high place overlooking water. At least they made sure his grave had good feng-shui.”

  “Won Ton killed him?”

  “Apparently. Coroner thinks he really made Li's eyes water before he died. But enough gossip. Not our problem. You said on the phone you had some news for me.”

  “About Ruby Wen.”

  McReadie raised an eyebrow. “How is she these days?”

  “Not that good. She was arrested in Bangkok a week ago with ten units of heroin.”

  McReadie clucked his tongue. “How did you hear about it?”

  “She told the arresting officer she was a DEA informant.”

  “Neat idea, getting you involved. She must be desperate. What are you going to do?”

  “The Agency want me to fly down to Bangkok and talk to her. I think I have a better bargaining position this time up.”

  “Be careful, John. By the time Ruby's finished with you she'll end up United States ambassador to Thailand.”

  “I don't think so.”

  “Don't be too sure. I've known the lass a lot longer than you have.”

  “This time she'll play ball. She's got no choice.”

  McReadie took out his wallet and slapped a one hundred dollar note on the table. “My big red one says she finds some way to screw you.”

  “Hate to take your money. I'm a guest in the country.”

  “Is it a bet?”

  Keelan shook his hand. “Easiest money I've ever made.”

  McReadie just smiled and finished his beer. “Your buy.”

  Chapter 50

  Maha Chai Prison

  After breakfast one morning Sumalee, the head guard, stamped onto the veranda. Ruby looked up. “You got a visitor,” she said. Prassaran again, Ruby thought. But then she saw the two armed soldiers waiting behind her. She felt a stab of fear.

  Nan was watching. She winked at her. “Watch your step, fancy pants.”

  ***

  They marched her through the men's prison to the governor's office. What now? Ruby thought. The same thought kept drumming through her brain: Article Twenty Seven.

  Her Eddie-ah was going to let her die.

  The governor's office was empty. The two soldiers shoved her through the door of an ante room.

  A man stood up behind the desk.

  John Keelan.

  ***

  This is the wrong girl, Keelan thought. They have brought me all this way from Hong Kong and they have got the wrong girl. “Ruby?” he said.

  “More better you don't get too close,” she said. “Got lice, heya.”

  Christ, it was her. What had they done to her? She had lost a lot of weight, and without her make-up and designer dresses she just looked like a scrawny Chinese coolie. She was wearing a soiled pair of cotton shorts and a t-shirt, and there were plain rubber thongs on her feet. No cherry-red polish on her fingernails; they were bitten down to the quick. Her hair hung in sweat-soaked strands around her eyes.

  “Sit down, Ruby,” he said.

  Ruby slumped into the hard wooden chair on the other side of the desk.

  Keelan took out his cigarettes and offered her one. She accepted it gratefully. Her hands were shaking. “How's it going, Ruby?”

  “Great, John. You?”

  “I heard they threatened you with an Article Twenty Seven. Holy Christ. You got yourself some real trouble, Ruby.”

  “Maybe they let me off for first offence?”

  “Maybe.” He tapped his lighter on the edge of the desk. “Ten units? That's a hell of a lot of horse.”

  “Not as percentage of total harvest. Got to keep perspective, John.”

  “So, what do you want to talk to me about, Ruby?”

  Ruby slumped forward, put her forehead on the desk. She folded her hands into fists and covered her head. “Got to be crazy to live like this, John. Just got to be crazy. Can't ever trust nobody, everybody want to rip you off. Getting pretty damn tired of this life.”

  “You told Colonel Ramawong you were my informant.”

  “Help me, John.”

  “I can't help you, Ruby.”

  “Please.”

  “Are you going to help me?”

  She raised her head from the table. “What you want?”

  “I want Eddie Lau. And I want his supplier in Bangkok.”

  Ruby shook her head. “He kill me for sure, John.”

  “If you don't help me, I can't help you.”

  “Want to help you. Just scared, heya. No shit.”

  “It's up to you.”

  Ruby's shoulders sagged. A fat tear rolled down her cheek. “Life is just bullshit.”

  “If you give me Eddie Lau, we can do a deal. He's the one we want.”

  “Can never do that, John.”

  Keelan leaned forward and picked up her hand. “Ruby, there's something I don't think you understand. This was not just a lucky bust. The DEA in Bangkok had been watching you for over a month. You've been under constant surveillance. We know you've been doing deals with a Corsican gangster called Baptiste Crocé, but Thailand has no conspiracy laws so we can't touch him. But Eddie Lau's another story. You know where he is and you can probably bring him some place we can get him.”

  She shook her head.

  “You'll be protected, I promise you'

  “Think about it, maybe.”

  “You don't have time to think about it.”

  “Eddie Lau going to kill me if I do this no matter where I run! Easy for you, John, not so easy for me!”

  “Maybe not. But here's something else you can think about. Remember it was the Thais who picked you up. Eddie Lau doesn't have any friends in the police here. They arrested you to take some of the heat out of our investigation. Here you are, thinking Eddie will save you to stop you from talking. But what if you talk and nobody wants to listen?”

  “What you mean, John?”

  “I mean what they're interested in is arresting a foreign national with seven kilos of heroin. That's all. They don't want you going to court and naming local bus
inessmen and police and politicians. Your contact spends a fortune every year to make sure that doesn't happen. Unless you get us to help you, the Thais may just decide it's easier to take you out and shoot you.”

  Ruby covered her face with her hands. Keelan stood up and called for the guards.

  “In too deep now,” Ruby said.

  “You can still get out.”

  Ruby gave him a pitying look. “Get out when I go to heaven, maybe not even then.”

  “You're not going to heaven, Ruby.”

  “Why not? What I ever do that is so bad?”

  The two guards came in and Ruby got to her feet.

  “Stay in touch,” Keelan said.

  Ruby was ushered out, dwarfed between the two guards. She turned around once and her tear-streaked face glared back at him in accusation, as if it was all his fault.

  Fuck.

  Well, he'd give her a few more days to stew. The Agency hadn't brought him all the way here to Bangkok for no reason. She was the one big chance they had.

  Chapter 51

  “THEY have dropped Article 27,” Prassaran said.

  Ruby sagged against the mesh grille. “Now they cannot shoot me, okay?

  “Not legally,” Prassaran said, carefully.

  So Keelan was wrong, they would not use Article 27 to silence her. “So when you get me out of here?”

  He held a perfumed handkerchief to his nose. “The klongs are bad today,” he said. “This heat is terrible.”

  “When you get me out of here?” Ruby repeated.

  “I am doing everything I can, Miss Wen. But you must understand, please, that your case has attracted a lot of interest. Especially, I might add, your brief case.” He smiled at his own little joke. Ruby did not laugh. “Seven kilograms of a prohibited narcotic substance is not an inconsequential amount, not something that may be resolved overnight. Now we have Article Twenty Seven out of the way ...”

  “Why don't Eddie just pay the money, heya?”

  “Mister Lau is most anxious that you do not become impatient.”

  “Tell him he is the scaly penis of a dead leper.”

  The assistant grinned. Prassaran mopped at the perspiration on his face. “I shall inform him that you are growing frustrated at the delays. Is there anything you need?”

  “Champagne,” Ruby said.

  “I can get you champagne but not the ice,” Prassaran said, and smiled thinly at his own wit. “Trust us, Miss Wen. We will soon have you out of this place. I am sure this episode has been most unpleasant for you.”

  Ruby closed her eyes. Another month of this and maybe I will prefer if they shoot me.

  “Keep your pecker up,” Prassaran said, and left, his acolyte hurrying along behind, the attaché case clutched in both arms.

  ***

  When she got back to the prison yard, Summalee grabbed her and pushed her against a wall. “What your fancy lawyer say to you?”

  “Thinks I will get off with ten hours community service.”

  Summalee pinched her arm tighter, and Ruby winced with pain. “Got a message from Louis Huu.”

  “Don't think I know him. Good with faces, can never remember names.”

  Summalee slapped her. “He says that if you tell him where he can find Eddie Lau, he will have you out of here in twenty-four hours.”

  “What if I cannot?”

  “Then you will rot in here. Anything your friend pays to get you out, he will pay more to keep you here. You understand?”

  Summalee let her go.

  Ruby sagged to her haunches. No way out now.

  No way out at all for Ruby Wen.

  ***

  Nan had paid Sumalee to buy her a ball point pen from the markets. Now, as Ruby watched, she scraped the metal nib on the cement floor of the cell until the tiny bearing fell out. Most of the ink emptied onto the floor and her sarong.

  “What are you doing?” Ruby asked her.

  “Don't want to catch AIDS, hon,” she said. She produced a foil wrap from her shirt and carefully diluted some white powder in a little water. Then she sucked the solution up through the tube, and held it there, her thumb over the end of the pen. She examined her arm and tapped on a vein with her forefinger to make it more pronounced. Then she jabbed the sharpened metal point of the pen through her skin.

  Ruby winced.

  Nan blew in the other end of the tube, forcing the heroin solution into the vein.

  When she pulled out the plastic tube blood seeped down her arm. Nan no longer cared. She shuddered with the rush of the drug flooding her system.

  Soong, the chiu-chao, was watching. She held out a little piece of foil. “You want to try?” she said to Ruby. “Smoke more better for you, I think.”

  Ruby shook her head. She thought about Keelan. He would have liked this situation. He would probably think it was funny.

  Chapter 52

  IT WAS the middle of the afternoon. Ruby was hunched on the veranda, watching the heat rise in waves from the earth compound. On the guard towers, soldiers armed with Springfield bolt action rifles sucked soft drinks from plastic bags through straws. She started to doze.

  She felt something crawling over her foot. It was a cockroach, a huge one, its antennae poking at the air.

  She had grown accustomed to them. Her hand snaked out and grasped it in one movement. She felt it wriggling in her fist. She went over to Soong and kicked her awake.

  “What do you want?” Soong muttered.

  Ruby held out her fist. “Fastest cockroach in the world,” she said in Cantonese. “Bet you twenty baht you do not have a cockroach that can run faster.”

  “Crazy woman.”

  “Twenty baht.”

  Soong thought about it then got up and went back into the cell. There was no shortage of cockroaches near the hong nam.

  Ruby waited for her at the bottom of the veranda steps. She returned a few minutes later, clutching something to her chest. “Race from here to the water trough,” she said. She sat down on the bottom step. “Count to three,” she said.

  Ruby squatted beside her. “One .. two ... now!” She opened her fist. The cockroach leaped from its prison and darted away across the dirt.

  Soong's roach tried to escape under the veranda. Soong scooped it out. But every time she kicked it across the compound it veered back again.

  Finally Soong stamped on it.

  Ruby had coaxed hers towards the trough. She gave it a final flick with her foot and it landed with a soft click against the cement sides. “Twenty baht,” she said.

  “You cheated,” Soong said. “I saw you.”

  Ruby got on her hands and knees and grabbed the stunned insect before it could scurry away. “Want to try again? You win this time we're even, okay. Otherwise you pay me forty baht, heya.”

  Soong went back inside the cell to find another roach.

  ***

  By the middle of the afternoon there were cockroach races all over the women's compound. Even Sumalee, the chief guard, joined in. She won consistently with a big, black beast she called Prince Rama, and Ruby Wen lost all the money she had taken from Soong. Then Soong herself produced an inconsequential brown insect that proved to be a flyer, and Sumalee lost the five hundred baht she had won and another five hundred of her own money. She was furious and refused to pay. She trod on both roaches and ordered all the prisoners back to their cells for the rest of the afternoon, where they moaned and sweated in the heat and the stench of the hong nams.

  It was the end of the cockroach racing.

  Chapter 53

  NAN was curled on the floor of the cell, shivering. Her eyes were raw slits. One of the Swiss girls went over to see what was wrong.

  “What is the matter with her?” Ruby said.

  “What you think's the matter, fancy pants?”

  “She's sick,” the other Swiss girl said.

  “Withdrawals,” the other girl said.

  Ruby knelt down next to Nan and stroked her hair from her face. “Y
ou can help her?”

  “Not giving her any of my stash,” the Swiss girl said. “It's her own fault, I warned her. She lost all her money playing the stupid cockroach game.”

  Ruby laid the American girl's head on her lap. Getting soft, Ruby-ah, going stupid in the head! Just a dirty gwailo hippie, okay.

  “Maybe you can buy some dope for her,” one of the Swiss girls said.

  “Cannot. Lose all my money too.”

  “Stupid,” the Swiss girl said, and went back to her corner of the cell. She took a syringe from her little pack of belongings.

  Ruby called out to Soong. “Need some chicken for this number four girl,” Ruby said.

  Soong produced a twist of foil from her shirt and held it out.

  Ruby reached for it, but Soong snatched her hand away. “Three hundred baht.”

  “Lose everything to Sumalee. Can pay you back, okay.”

  “Got to pay me now.”

  “She is sick!”

  “Not my problem,” Soong said, and she went back to her corner.

  “I piss on your grandfather's bones!” Ruby hissed.

  ***

  Ruby held Nan as she shivered and thrashed and cried out, fighting invisible demons. Ruby cradled her in her lap through the night and she was still awake when the dirty stain of dawn seeped through the barred windows. Finally, exhaustion overtook her and she fell into a black and empty sleep.

  ***

  A greasy, grey morning in Patpong. A Landcruiser was parked down the road from the 69 Bar. A local DEA man, David Lee, sat behind the wheel, smoking a cigarette; Keelan wound his window down and tried not to think about tobacco. The world is full of fucking addictive drugs, he thought.

  “That's where he does all his business,” Lee said.

  “Soixante Neuf. Good French name.”