“No news from Ryota?” She moved to get a cup of coffee.
“No,” he said, turning to face her. “I’m going to relieve him now.” He stalked to the living room where he put on his dress shirt from yesterday, and noosed himself into his tie. Okay, somebody needed nic gum. She didn’t think it wise to bring that up right now. Instead she carried on. “Will you need me today?”
“Not unless someone shows up at the train market.”
“Okay, then. I told Dad I’d visit with him, so how about you call if there’s news?”
“You’re the boss.”
Kannon snagged his car keys and headed for the front door. Just like that. Fine. She was pouring herself coffee when he spoke. “You coming or not?”
“I thought we’d agreed to split up for the day.”
“How are you getting back to the boat?”
“I’ll take a water taxi to the docks and get Darae to pick me up from there.”
“I’ll take you.”
“Doesn’t make sense you going all the way to the docks and then back to the market in rush hour. Ryota’s already exhausted.”
He held the door open for her impatiently, seeming to think he’d explained himself thoroughly. Gina thought her head would explode. She took up her purse, tagged her phone and strolled after him. She’d call Darae on the way to have a boat at the docks to ferry her to The Pussycat.
The car was running by the time she reached it and this morning, now that the cat was out of the bag regarding Pensri, he used a remote to open the gate to the underground parking. He bullied his way into the traffic but then had no choice except to inch along at a snail’s pace. It was start and stop, start and stop, making only a few dozen feet of headway at a go.
A dog loped up alongside the car and began to follow them, standing up and sitting down as they stopped and started along the route. Gina looked to a nearby food stall.
“I’ll go get some noodles and meet you down the block.”
“We don’t have time for you to feed a dog.”
“I’m not. He’s reminding me that it’s breakfast time.” She got out, even as Kannon rolled ahead.
Gina got a box of noodles, dropped a wormy mess of them on the ground which the dog licked clean and, with a quick pat to its head, she caught up to Kannon.
She held up traffic for the two seconds it took to get into the car and immediately there was the blast of a horn. Kannon threw the car into park and exited, striding to the driver, some unfortunate ex-pat in a BMW.
“Oh shit, shit, shit,” Gina didn’t know whether to sink into her seat, follow Kannon or run for it. Instead she watched in the rearview mirror as Bangkok’s latest incident of road rage unfolded. The driver had clearly taken stock of the situation but there was nowhere to go, his car as boxed in as everyone else’s.
She cringed as Kannon pulled open the door to the driver’s car, seizing him by the front of his shirt and yanking him half out of the vehicle. The guy was desperately apologizing, and after shoving him back into the car, Kannon strode back to her, his face tight and angry.
Once he got back behind the wheel, Gina kept her head down and her mouth filled with noodles. Only as they crossed yet another bridge did she venture to comment. “For the record, as your boss, I don’t think you should be picking fights like that. We’ve kinda got enough trouble as it is.”
“Fire me, then.”
“Is that why you did it? To provoke me into firing you? I really don’t get you at all.”
He adjusted his mirrored sunglasses. “Unless I can get my boss back soon, I’m in trouble with the Yakuza again, and that’s to say nothing about how I’m going to keep paying for my daughter’s schooling or anything else. Except I can’t do anything but wait and wait for some nameless person to stumble into our trap. Or not. Only thing left for me to do is chauffeur you home because I’m supposed to be protecting you, too.”
“So you’re frustrated.”
He gripped the wheel as if aiming to bust it in two. “The situation I can handle. What irritates me is you and a stray dog making a noodle run the second I’m stuck in traffic. You don’t need to make my job harder.”
“So is that what you think you are? Bodyguard to a mafia princess?”
He rolled ahead, braked. Was silent.
“Look, Kannon. I’m not trying to put you into a spot. I’m not trying to complicate things. You don’t want sex with me. Fine. You don’t want me as your boss. Fine. You don’t want to walk away, either. Fine. Only thing I don’t know is what the hell you do want.”
He stared straight ahead. He rolled the car forward, stopped. A space opened up and he filled it again. She filled herself up on noodles and said nothing, because really there was nothing more to say.
“A date.”
It was a good thing she’d just swallowed, otherwise she would’ve choked. “A date? You want a date…with me?”
“Yes.”
She stared.
He blew out his breath and stripped off his glasses to look her in the eye. “I want to go on a nice, normal date with someone I don’t have to keep secrets from. With someone who knows what I do. With someone who’s attracted to me, and vice versa. That’s what I want from you.”
He wore the same defiant look as on the plane when he’d told her he was a killer. He was bracing for her refusal.
“To be honest, I’ve never really had a normal date either,” she admitted. “But I’ll give it a try.”
You needed to have studied Kannon for as intensely as she had to have seen the slight relaxation of his shoulders, the tight lines around his mouth loosen. “Thank you.”
A space opened. He closed it.
She passed him the rest of the noodles, which was more than half. He took up the chopsticks and drove with his knees while eating.
“So, to clarify, did we just agree to go out on a date?”
“No,” he explained through a mouthful. “All we’ve settled is that when I ask you out, you’ll agree.”
“And when will that be?”
“When I know, you’ll know.”
They’d cleared the bridge and Kannon swung onto a road that ran along the docks, managing to somehow pick up speed, hoover up noodles and still keep his shirt clean. The man was a superhero. At this rate, they’d be there before she’d cleared things up. “And are we on the traditional ‘no sex until the third date’ rule?”
“Yes.”
“And are we doing the dates in order, or are we going to change it up? Make the third date first, say?”
“First, second, third.”
She considered that. “Breakfast, lunch, dinner. We could do a big push and get it done in one day. A Thai-themed three-date scheme.”
Kannon swung up to the docks and sure enough, there was Darae and one of the girls waiting for her. He handed her the empty noodle box. “I’ll call. Now get out. I’ve got work to do.”
“No goodbye kiss?”
His lips twitched into a near smile. Yes! “Get out.”
Gina found her father ensconced in his luxurious lounge chair, his frail body wrapped in a vintage smoking jacket that still reeked of the fine Dominican cigars once considered his trademark. Balanced in the corner of his mouth was one of them, unlit.
“You look like Hugh Hefner in that getup,” Gina remarked, as she sat beside her father, taking his hand.
He pretended to blow smoke rings. “I don’t smoke anymore, but that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the aroma. Besides, it helps me think.”
“About this situation with Alak?”
He reinserted the cigar. “I’m leaving that to you and Kannon and Darae. If the three of you can’t figure out how to free him, then I sure as hell won’t be able to. Maybe it’s cowardice on my part. Too hard to see how one man can destroy everything Alak and I spent most of your life building.”
“We’ll get it back, Daddy. Don’t worry.”
He patted her hand, as if telling her the same thing. “I only call
ed you this morning because it seems you won’t spend any time with me unless I beg for it.”
“Dad, that’s not true!”
“Then why didn’t you come home last night?”
“I went to see Pensri.”
“You stayed the night with one of the girls?”
“She’s not a girl to me, she’s a friend.”
“Did either one of Alak’s men stay with you?”
“Yes, Kannon did.”
Vincenzo Zaffini worked the cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. “That must’ve been interesting.”
“It wasn’t. It was boring. What else do you want to talk about?”
“My last words.”
Gina felt a lump in her throat. “And who says that you aren’t going to beat this? With medicine being what it is today a lot of people manage to—”
“I stopped treatments a couple of weeks ago,” he interrupted. “They weren’t working, and I didn’t want to spend what little time I had left withering in some hospital. I’ve always made my own decisions, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to hand my life over to some doctor right in the home stretch.”
“I don’t think you should give up,” Gina insisted as gently as she could.
“We all die, Gina,” he said. “Only thing we control is how we live. And that’s why I’ve been considering my last words carefully. Only one chance to get those right.”
“Have you come to a decision?” she asked, trying to remain cheerful despite the morbidity of their conversation.
“When I was a boy,” he said, giving her hand a weak squeeze, “the family used to believe that when a person was about to die they gained a special understanding of death and the afterlife. That they could hear the whispers of angels or their ancestors.”
“Oh?”
“It’s all bullshit. Here I am on death’s door and I don’t understand anything more about what’s to come than I ever did. I haven’t the faintest notion of where I’m going, or even if I’m going anywhere at all.”
“I’m pretty sure they have a place in heaven for you,” she said. “Even if it’s in the smoking section.”
Vincenzo laughed dryly. “My daughter, the health nut. You’re going to feel awful stupid one day, lying in your death bed, dying of nothing. At least my cigars gave me closure.”
Gina rolled her eyes. “So sounds like those last words of yours aren’t going to be about an afterlife, huh?”
He shook his head. “No. By the time I know what I’m talking about it’ll be too late to say anything. Think I’m going to go with a poem.”
Gina sucked in her cheeks to keep from laughing. “A poem? You?”
Her father looked almost affronted. “What? You’ve never written one?”
“Roses are purple, violets are lime, I made up these colors so this poem would rhyme,” she reeled off.
“Yes, well, I’m hoping to compose something a little more meaningful. I’ve been reading a lot of Buddhist philosophy, and these Zen masters recite a poem with their last breath. To share some last bit of wisdom with their disciples.”
“You’ve got disciples?”
“Certainly not Darae,” he replied. “I don’t think she’s listened to a word I’ve said in all the time we’ve been married, so it’s not likely she’ll start now. Besides, I don’t want to spend my last moment stuck between wife and death.”
Gina groaned at the pun. “That’s terrible, Daddy.”
“I try. Seriously, I was intending the poem for you. One last little piece of advice before your old man goes to feed the worms.”
“That’s sick,” Gina laughed, trying not to cry at the same time. “But yeah, I’ll try to be there for your poetry recital.”
“I’ll wait for you.”
His face was so gaunt, so pale. She swallowed. “You better.”
“What then, Gina? What are your plans after we sort things out here in Bangkok?”
Gina wasn’t thinking much beyond her first date with Kannon. “Back to my job, I guess.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t hightail it there already. Being here rekindle old memories?”
“Yeah,” she replied. “Good ones. Bad ones. It’s been so long since I left I’d forgotten what this place means to me. Now that I’m here and in the thick of things, well, it feels like I’m finally back where I belong.”
“Darae would be happy to hear that. She’s always had great ambitions for you.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“She’s a smart lady, Gina. If you’re going to choose the path I did, you couldn’t have a better person in your corner. And that Kannon guy isn’t too shabby either.”
“Dad!”
“Not that it’s any of my business,” he continued. “All I’m saying is if a girl were going to have a partner in crime he’d make a good one. Tough. Smart. Loyal. A family man. There certainly are a lot worse choices.”
“You giving me a sales pitch, Daddy?”
“From the way you look at him, the way he looks at you, I think it’s a done deal.”
Gina gave her father a gentle hug. “We’re booked for three dates. After that, who knows?”
His arms stayed around her, his stupid cigar poking her cheek. “Who ever does? Only I had to get in my two cents worth before my birth certificate expired.”
She batted at his cigar. “I swear you just sit around thinking up new ways to describe your death.”
“Yeah, well, that’s the life of a poet, isn’t it?”
Gina climbed into the boxcar and sighed. Kannon was standing in the room, gun trained on a man in a chair who seemed completely unconcerned by the threat. He was a short, fat, young Thai, horn-rimmed glasses set on his impassive face, his body squeezed into a Starcraft t-shirt two sizes too small.
“Does a day go by you’re not pointing that thing at someone?”
Kannon glanced her way, then did a double-take. “Why are you wet?”
“It’s not my fault,” she said, sliding the door closed behind her. “I was swimming when you called and you made it sound like an emergency. I barely had time to dress and no time to fix my hair.”
“Swimming? There’s no pool on the yacht.”
Gina, refixing her wet knot of hair, stopped. “Kannon. You must be joking. The yacht’s in a swimming pool. It’s called The Gulf of Thailand.”
Kannon flexed his grip on the gun. “The water’s got sharks, Gina.”
She might’ve felt flattered by his concern, except that he was being silly. “Pfft. There’s not that many, and most of them aren’t any bigger than me.”
Kannon stretched his neck, like his tie was too tight. “Gina. Hard to date a dead woman.”
“I bet. I stick with the live ones myself.”
“WHO THE HELL ARE YOU AND WHAT DO YOU WANT?” their prisoner suddenly boomed at them in Thai. That explained Kittyjack’s earplug recommendation. Good thing the boxcar was way at the end of the market.
“I take it you’re Capslock,” Gina said, switching to their prisoner’s language. “I’m looking for a woman named Victoria Wakai.”
“If I tell you what I know, will you let me go?” he demanded at the same decibel level.
Gina motioned for him to lower his voice. “Sure.”
“First, I should tell you that I’m only tech support,” the hacker replied, ignoring her cue to pipe down. “I run sites for all kinds of clients, no questions asked. I’m only a businessman. You understand?”
No, she didn’t. That had always been a problem for her. Never understood how to turn a blind eye. “Yeah,” Gina said. “Sure. Where we can find her?”
“I don’t know where she is,” he shouted, “but I know her partner, and the asshole owes me money. If you can find him then maybe you can find her.”
Gina backed away a few feet in an effort to save her ears. “What’s the guy’s name?”
“Ek Choeun,” he replied. “Cambodian guy. He’s some sort of tribal leader there—calls himself a sorcer
er.”
Oh, wonderful. “So you’re saying he’s in Cambodia? That’s not a lot of help, now is it?”
“No, he’s here in Bangkok,” Capslock yelled. “Been here for a few months now.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know where he lives. He runs a couple of businesses. One’s out in 70 Rai called—”
“Been there, killed them,” Gina said. “What else?”
The hacker looked at Kannon, then kept on. “Yeah, well, he also runs a kind of black magic service. A lot of businessmen in Taiwan and China believe that crap, and they pay him a load of money to curse their enemies. I don’t know where he operates from, though.”
Gina held up her hand to Capslock and related what she’d learned to Kannon. “What do you think?”
“I think Mr. Microphone here told us everything he knows. The problem is who else is he going to tell if we let him go?” said Kannon, adjusting his aim upwards to the man’s head.
When Gina translated what Kannon said to the hacker, he snorted. “Lady, it’d be suicide for me to tell Ek what I told you. I keep out of trouble.”
There it was again. The attitude that it was okay to profit from the misery of others. Gina felt her skin crawl the way it had when the pedophile in 70 Rai had touched her. “You seem to think that just because you run things from behind a keyboard you’re somehow innocent of the crimes. And I’m not talking about some petty fraud. You have any idea what’s on her site?”
If Capslock was in the slightest bit repentant, he did a great job of hiding it. “Yeah, well, you are probably guilty of a few crimes yourself. Like I said, I only host the stuff. No questions asked.”
He was right. She had killed two strangers days ago, and before that—. She took a deep breath. No. Whatever her crimes, Capslock couldn’t sluff off his own responsibility. Gina stepped up and kicked him in the shin. “You want me to tell my friend what you just said? Because you sound an awful lot like those fuckers in 70 Rai before he put a bullet in their heads.”
Although Capslock still looked defiant, his next words were pitched low. “What do you want?”
“You’re going to keep on with what you’re doing for now. Don’t want to tip off Ek. But the next time we’re in touch, you’ll have forty-eight hours to get out of Bangkok, and stay out. You understand?”
Gina Takes Bangkok (The Femme Vendettas) Page 10