Heidegger strolled into his office—a funky industrial building reclaimed by an extremely expensive modernist architect and stocked with a collection of rare Danish modern furniture and pricey artwork by contemporary Japanese painters—and turned to his personal assistant.
“Miss Monahan. Get Karl on the phone. It’s urgent.”
His assistant, Marybeth—she loved it when Jon went old school and used her last name—nodded and started dialing. She didn’t need to look the number up—she dialed it several times a day. Karl was the investment banker. He handled the money and, well, rock stars and their money was always a complicated subject. But where some people might be judgmental, even critical, of the rampant waste and extravagance of millionaire rockers, she didn’t care. As far as Marybeth was concerned, they’d earned it, and blowing it on mansions, private jets, custom cars, and all kinds of assorted weird shit was just part of the lifestyle.
She loved rock music more than anything else in the world, and working for JH Management allowed her to rub elbows with all the greats. Franz Tulip? She helped him shop at Barneys when he was in town. Hellvetica? She’d been to a party at their house in Malibu. Aimee LeClerq? Marybeth had gone to the Kabbalah Center with her and now wore the protection string around her wrist like it was diamonds from Harry Winston. Rocketside? Signing them had been her idea. Metal Assassin? They were her favorites.
Marybeth Monahan was not shy about detailing her wild weekend in Paris with guitar god Bruno Caravali to anyone who would listen. Even if it only lasted a couple of minutes, letting Bruno lift her skirt, rip her fishnets, and take her from behind on top of the Eiffel Tower at midnight was the highlight of her life.
What girl didn’t dream of something like that?
Marybeth punched a button on the phone system.
“I’ve got Karl.”
While Heidegger handled their careers, Karl was the gatekeeper to their vaults, the man who made sure the incredible bounty of musical El Dorado wasn’t completely wasted on paternity suits and trips to rehab. Karl wasn’t about to turn over a million dollars of Turk’s money—even though it was, technically, Turk’s money—until he understood the true nature of the crisis.
“Couldn’t keep it in his pants, could he?”
“I don’t think that’s it.”
“Drugs?”
“He’s been clean for six months.”
“If he’s in a jam, he should just call the American consulate. They’ll get him a lawyer or whatever.”
Heidegger heaved a sigh. Mostly he was glad that Karl was so hard-nosed, but sometimes it was just a pain.
“I’m supposed to call him and tell him the cash is on the way.”
“Tell him I’ll pull it together, but I want to know what it’s for.”
He hung up, pushed his glasses up his nose, and proceeded to dial the string of numbers Turk had given him. No manager likes to deliver bad news to his or her clients, but since the breakup of Metal Assassin it seemed like all the news Turk ever got was bad. Though Steve and Bruno both got record deals, no one was interested in a Turk Henry solo project. Despite his musicianship, Turk’s reputation for excess—and in rock star terms that meant excessive excess—got a quick rejection from everyone Jon had talked to. Still, it wasn’t like Turk was broke. He had at least a hundred million dollars in various bank accounts and investment schemes. If Turk had bothered to ask, Jon would’ve told him to call it a day and go raise horses on a ranch or buy a winery. But that wasn’t what Turk wanted to hear. Turk wanted to keep rocking.
He waited about thirty seconds, then heard a voice on the other side of the world.
“Sawadee.”
“Hi. Turk Henry please.”
A sequence of pips and beeps followed, and then Turk’s voice came over the line.
“Did you get it?”
Turk sounded edgy, excited.
“Karl’s working on it. But listen, he wants to know what it’s for.”
There was a pause on the line.
“I don’t want this getting out.”
“How many times have I covered for you? Your secret’s safe with me.”
“They said they’d kill her if it got out.”
He could hear Turk breathing hard.
Heidegger sat up in his chair.
“Turk. Tell me what’s going on.”
“Sheila’s been kidnapped.”
He couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like Turk was crying on the other end.
“Relax. We’ll get her back.”
“Promise?”
“I’ll do my best. Now let me get the money sorted out with Karl.”
“Thanks, Jon.”
Heidegger hung up, and, despite his concern for Sheila, he couldn’t help himself: he smiled. This was fantastic news. This was human interest. E!, VH1, US Weekly, People, MTV—everybody would be all over this story. Turk’s plight would be splattered all over the media: his life after the tragic breakup of Metal Assassin, his struggles with a variety of addictions, his marriage to a supermodel—and now her kidnapping. Barring another invasion of a Middle Eastern country, Turk would be on center stage in the world media. The public would talk about him, worry about him. They would feel Turk’s pain and, best of all, they would buy a new Turk Henry CD. This was Turk’s career rising from the ashes like the proverbial phoenix. How could he keep it quiet?
As he began to draft a press release in his head, he sent an instant message telling Marybeth to roll calls to his publicist and to the A & R man at Planetary Records. They had work to do.
Nine
PHUKET
Captain Somporn watched as two of his men, Saksan and Kittisak, bundled the dead American’s body into the back of a battered tuk tuk, a rickety three-wheeled golf cart. They tried, unsuccessfully, to prop him up like a sleeping tourist, but even with rigor mortis setting in the body would flop unnaturally in the backseat—a marionette with its strings cut—the head lolling and swinging like some kind of freak tetherball in the wind. There was no way to stop it, so Somporn told his men to go fast and hope no one noticed. Besides, the body was starting to smell and the flies it attracted were annoying.
Somporn was fond of his men. They had once been a crack narcotics interdiction unit—the fierce Thahan Prahan—patrolling the Thai-Cambodia border. Perfectly attuned to the jungle—the rustle of leaves, the snap of twigs, the scent of a distant cigarette—they had ambushed dozens of convoys in their day, carting off hundreds of pounds of raw opium, delivering it to their grateful superior officers. They were so daring and ingenious that they were eventually brought to the attention of their commanding officer, General Chuengrakkiat, who offered them a generous bonus if they would turn their attentions to protecting the convoys instead of annihilating them.
Although he was a captain—he had attained this rank through diligence, bravery, and the uncanny ability to look the other way without being told to—Somporn was, like his men, a poorly educated boy from working-class parents. In fact, Somporn’s mother and father ran a fairly successful green papaya salad—som tum—and sticky rice business on one of the side streets in Bangkok. Somporn had always assumed he would spend his days working in the family trade, grating green papayas and making their homemade nam pla—it was his great-grandmother’s secret recipe—when the draft interrupted his plans.
His parents weren’t wealthy enough to bribe the Army officials and get him out of it, so it was no surprise when his name was called. Somporn sometimes wondered if his parents had just decided they’d like to have a little more room in their cramped apartment and that’s why they let him go, maybe even wanted him to. Either way, it didn’t matter now. The world of cluttered Bangkok streets and the smell of fresh green papaya were in the past. If pressed, he could still brew up a tasty nam pla, and his men often implored him to make the spicy fish sauce for them.
When Somporn looked at his soldiers now, he had to laugh. They had slowly transformed from steely-scrubbed, clean-cut representatives of the b
est of the Royal Thai Army to … well, they looked like a cross between one of those techno-hippie bands from Japan and a ragtag group of sea pirates. They were a lean and, frankly, frightening group of men. Wearing their hair long and stringy, with scruffy and sparse goatees and Fu Manchu–style mustaches, their preferred dress code was a ripped-up T-shirt featuring an English band like The Clash or a product logo like Motorola splashed on the front, mixed with a pair of baggy surfer shorts or khakis cut to the ankles. Only Apirath sported tattoos—he had decided he would use his part of the ransom to buy a Harley-Davidson motorcycle—but they all had multiple ear piercings and wore all kinds of necklaces and jangly bracelets. It was a decidedly effeminate look—balanced by the automatic weapons slung electric-guitar low from their shoulders—that was not improved by the fact that a couple of the men had begun wearing the sunglasses of the captured women day and night.
Somporn walked back along the beach to his cabin/command post—really nothing more than a small wood frame room with a thatched roof and a few crude furnishings—and sat down on the floor for a smoke. He lit a Russian cigarette and inhaled. He would’ve preferred a Marlboro or a Camel but now that Americans weren’t smoking anymore you couldn’t find those brands as easily. He wasn’t a heavy smoker—he enjoyed the occasional cigarette—but a mangrove swamp wasn’t the best place for a hideout unless you took pleasure in feeding mosquitoes, and the smoke kept the little bloodsuckers away. That was the choice: malaria or cancer; either way, he had to get out of this swamp soon or it was going to kill him.
Somporn squashed a big mosquito against his arm and allowed himself a smile. The plan, as pathetic and desperate as it was, had turned out a stunning success. Who knew they’d catch a millionaire rock star’s supermodel wife when they’d gone hunting for tourists? It was like snatching an old lady’s purse and finding it filled with diamonds.
The original plan had been to kidnap a few farangs—Westerners—cash in on their safe return, and use the money to purchase opium from a grower he knew near Chiang Mai. After taking the opium to Hong Kong and selling it to a heroin lab, he’d have enough to give everyone a bonus, buy a small boat, and get back into business. It was a solid enough plan.
But it was nothing like the glory days when Somporn and his men had terrorized the South China Sea. They’d been real pirates then, using the element of surprise and sheer audaciousness to take down some major scores. Attacking at night, their small inflatables almost invisible in the black water, they’d drift up on a big oil tanker—sometimes a natural gas tanker—use hooks and ropes to climb aboard, disable the communicators, and take the crew hostage. Since Somporn and his men had been elite commandos in the Thai Army, they were well trained and highly efficient, able to overwhelm a boat’s crew in a matter of minutes.
They would sail for a small, uninhabited island and dump the crew there with a couple of gallons of water and a few cans of food. Then it was a quick change of flag—Somporn always liked to use the Venezuelan flag for some reason—a couple of gallons of paint to change the name of the vessel, and they could sail right into Shanghai harbor and sell the gas or oil to a dealer he knew. It was an extremely lucrative business.
Less lucrative were the Pai Gow tables in the casino at the Hotel Lisboa on Macau. That’s where Somporn always went after a heist.
He had a ritual. He would take his cut of the score and wire several thousand dollars to his local Wat in Bangkok for good luck and blessings from the Buddha. Then he’d stash a large chunk of cash in a safe deposit box at his Hong Kong bank. This money he was saving for the day when he could afford to buy a real pirate boat. He’d then have several new suits made for him at a custom tailor he liked in Shenzen, so that when he checked in to the hotel, he looked sharp, respectable, and anonymous, like a successful businessman on vacation.
Even though the island of Macau is connected to the Chinese mainland by a bridge, the European architecture and the fact that some people still spoke Portuguese made him feel like he was far away from Southeast Asia. Captain Somporn always stayed at the Hotel Lisboa. It was his hideout: opulent, extravagant, and the last place the authorities would look for a rugged Thai pirate. He’d spend a month, maybe two, sitting at the Pai Gow tables sipping single malt Scotch and listening to the gentle clicking sounds of the tiles as they were shuffled, stacked, and sorted into eight piles of four. He loved that the game was filled with ritual, like a religious ceremony, the tiles waiting in neat rows as the dealer shook the dice to determine the order in which they’d be dealt. He loved that the dealer had to be as lucky as the player; no one really seemed to have an advantage, and most of the hands ended up a tie, a “push hand,” where nobody won and nobody lost. It was, for him, the time when he felt the most at peace.
When he was out of money, he’d make a phone call to Bangkok and alert his crew that they were back in business.
This went on for a number of years, and eventually the safe deposit box in the bank in Hong Kong contained enough money for him to invest in a very fast, Russian-made, armored assault boat—specifically, an OSA Class Type 205 Fast Patrol Boat. It wasn’t that expensive. He’d bought it off a disgruntled Russian Navy crew that had deserted and were trying to get to New Zealand, where they were planning on buying some land and starting a winery.
Somporn adored that boat. Even though he couldn’t read any of the instrument panels—they were all in Cyrillic—and even though the dual diesel engines used barrels of fuel, for some reason that ship made him feel like a real pirate. Maybe it was the large and relatively well-appointed stateroom, with an actual air conditioner and private bathroom; maybe it was the radar that helped them track other ships; or maybe it was just the nifty little rocket launcher and the four .30mm guns mounted on the bow and sides that gave him that extra frisson of danger. The boat didn’t have any missiles—the Russians had already sold those to some Chechens—but it didn’t matter, it looked intimidating and most ships were happy to surrender without putting up a fight.
Outfitted with a fast warship, Somporn and his crew went to work terrorizing the Strait of Malacca between Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore for two fun and profitable years before a Thai fighter pilot managed to get their coordinates and lock on a couple of missiles.
Most of the crew managed to escape the explosions and elude the helicopters that hunted the water for survivors. Somporn, however, was unlucky—it seemed the thousands of dollars sent to the Wat had been for nothing—and was scooped out of the water by the Thai Navy. Perhaps he should’ve sent more money to the monks; perhaps it was just his karma. He used the rest of his savings to bribe the officers and crew of the Navy boat to let him go. Once the cash transfer had been confirmed, they were happy to help him, setting him adrift in a rubber raft fifty miles off the Thai coast in shark-infested waters.
Defeated, dehydrated, hungry, and broke, he finally washed ashore and began the slow process of reassembling his crew. That’s why he was here, feeding mosquitoes in this mangrove swamp; but this was just the beginning. Soon he would return to his pirate life, the high seas, easy money, and the Pai Gow tables of Macau.
…
Somporn swatted another mosquito. He hadn’t noticed this one feeding on him, and it had filled itself with his blood. The bug exploded in a burst of crimson. Somporn stood and went over to his bed. He rummaged through his duffel bag until he found a bottle of Calvin Klein’s Obsession cologne for men. It smelled nice, sophisticated, and he wasn’t stingy as he splashed it on his face. He turned and checked himself in the mirror, running his hand through his hair, making sure there wasn’t anything stuck in his teeth. Somporn started to leave and then stopped himself. He took the bottle of Obsession and shook a few drops down his pants, onto his pubic hair. He’d never met a supermodel before.
…
Captain Somporn didn’t knock. It wasn’t about being polite; it was about control. He carried a battery-powered lantern—the light swarming with a variety of exotic insects—into the hut. The smel
l was the first thing that hit him. Sharp, astringent, and nasty: shit mixed with fear. He’d smelled it before, once when a Cambodian drug lord took his patrol captive and several of his platoon mates were executed in front of him. It happened so fast and was so terrifying that the men lost control of their bowels. Somporn didn’t like to be reminded of it.
He saw the four miserable hostages leaning against the walls of the hut, their faces pale and exhausted, their skin clammy and bug-bit.
“Are you hungry?”
The British couple nodded, the woman from Seattle whimpered and pissed herself, and Sheila glared at him.
“You’ve got to let her clean herself.”
Somporn smiled.
“Perhaps if her husband had shown a little more respect.”
“If not for her, then for me. Please. It’s disgusting.”
Somporn’s expression changed; he stared at Sheila for a moment, then bent down and unlocked the handcuff holding her.
“Come with me.”
He quickly—because he didn’t like the smell any more than Sheila did—cuffed the Seattle woman’s hands together, and led Sheila out of the hut.
…
Once outside, Sheila took a few deep breaths to try and clear her nostrils. She looked around the camp and saw several of the kidnappers sitting around a fire, drinking beer and eating bowls of noodles. A few women sat on the ground listening to a transistor radio and peeling mangoes. For the first time since she’d been kidnapped, her stomach growled.
Salty: A Novel Page 5