by AD Davies
“That makes no sense. If you want—”
“The Vietnamese are organized, my friend. After decades of communist rule, they are disciplined. They are also ruthless and lack any concept of remorse. But they have rules. A code. Fanuco has none of this. Sammy LeHavre, he is a rat. A cockroach.”
“A survivor.” I understood now where Bertrand was going with this.
“Correct. If he is working with the Vietnamese gangs then he believes they are his key to staying in business. He is useful to those bigger men, but they are not useful to him unless they are running the city.”
I am always the house, Sammy told me. I only ever back winners.
I said, “You’re hoping the Vietnamese will rub Fanuco out.”
“Rub him out. Ha! A good phrase, yes.” He paused and let out a sigh. “Mr. Park, I am sorry. Your girl is dead. She must be. She is dead, or in Vietnam, or the Middle East, or some place they desire young flesh. But it is no concern of mine.”
“Don’t you care that more people will die?”
“If the Vietnamese take Fanuco down, hundreds more will be saved.”
“And you’re going to let the Vietnamese do it.”
“No, Monsieur Park. My colleagues are going to let them do it. I am only a press monkey.”
He hung up. The man had wanted so badly to nail Fanuco, but he was tired now; he just wanted Fanuco gone, destroyed. I could call one of his colleagues, I thought, or I could take a chance and phone the embassy.
But I made a different call instead.
Chapter Twenty
I had to question if I could really do this without compromising my safety. My life. Even Sarah’s. Entering a bar in which a pimp, two big men and two potential people-smugglers now met, men who would be less than comfortable with my activities, was it the smartest move I could make?
No more compromises.
I stepped inside.
A heavily-mustachioed man served drinks from behind a plain bar surrounded by cheap MDF walls. It was the sort of place a couple of dozen soccer hooligans might congregate to yell at the screen, and throw beer bottles at the window. A smattering of Vietnamese men—young and old—sat drinking pastis and, despite the ban, each held a real cigarette, smoke coiling up to the ceiling. Most of the occupants looked surprised but not particularly bothered by my presence.
Sammy LeHavre and his associates were not among them.
At the bar, I ordered a pastis but the jowly barman just rubbed his nose and flicked something on the floor. Waved a dismissive hand.
He said, “Allez.” Meaning “go.” In this context, I think it meant, “Get out, dickhead.”
His hands gripping a glass, a damp rag motionless within. The door behind him opened a crack. Nobody exited. The man allowed a sideways glance, during which he positioned the glass on a shelf, nearly dropping it in the process.
“Who’s in there?” I asked.
He wouldn’t look at me. “Mon chien.”
“A dog? Un chien is your dog?” I whistled a come-here whistle. “Here boy! Allez!”
The door squeaked slowly open.
Sammy LeHavre stood in the metal frame with Butterball and Michelin Man behind, both expressing that bored look known the world over as “I’m-a-tough-guy-no-one-can-touch-me.” Sammy shook his head as if amused, but his eyes were dark, his hands fidgety.
The barman looked at the customers. Nodded. Like some 60’s or 70’s western, the older fellas exited without finishing their drinks, followed by all but the two youngest Vietnamese men. The barman then relocated further away from Sammy, and busied himself in the corner wiping down the clean surface.
The two Vietnamese lads sipped their drinks. Looking my way.
“You must leave now,” Sammy said. “You get one chance. Go.”
“You have her phone,” I said. “You met her, you know what happened.”
Sammy risked a glance back at the room into which I could not see. Breathed out loudly through his nose. He said, “I am sorry I did not tell you earlier. But she is dead. The man too. They flashed too much cash, and they died. End of story. You can go now.”
“Where?”
“In the sewer. A hole in the ground. I do not know. They are dead. You stop looking, and you go home, or you end up in this same place.”
Okay, I still had the option to walk away. Tell Caroline her sister was dead, and get the Foreign Office to instigate a search. But the police here had their hands full looking for one of their own. I still remembered Henrietta Dupree, and how the pain of her disappearance clearly haunted Bertrand when he told me they had failed her. And what were the chances that Caroline would accept the word of a loyalty-deficient scumbag like Sammy LeHavre?
I said, “And how does Vila Fanuco feel about you playing nice with the opposition?”
Sammy dead-eyed me. With a flick of his fingers, Butterball and Michelin Man advanced from the doorway. As they flipped up a section of the bar on its hinge I caught a glimpse of three Vietnamese men inside the room: the Man in Tan and Umbrella Man, both staring out at me, plus a third in a slick suit and wraparound sunglasses and built like a rugby back-liner, holding hands with the terrified black girl Sammy had pulled out of Bar Nameless.
“Okay,” I said, backing toward the exit. “I’m leaving.”
“Too late,” Sammy said.
Slightly in front of his colleague, Butterball reached for me. I whipped out the cosh with my right hand and cracked it into the bony part of his wrist. He yelped and pulled back. Michelin Man pushed by and I tried the same, but he blocked my arm and twisted my elbow in a rigid grip.
He’d had some training.
I kicked at his knee, but didn’t have the angle to be effective. Cradling his wrist by his body, Butterball punched me in the stomach with his good hand. I doubled over, pretended it hurt more than it did, and dropped the cosh. As I hoped, Michelin Man released my arm.
I crouched on the floor and Sammy gave commands in quick-fire French. I picked up words for “hurt” and “hotel,” which I assumed meant they would hurt me and dump me back at the Grecian.
But no. I will not be hurt like that again.
Michelin Man grabbed me by the hair, letting me in close. I used my heel, brought it down into his knee, this time at the correct angle. A series of wet snaps followed as tendons and bone came apart. He tipped over toward me, screaming. I brought my elbow upward into his jaw. His head flipped sideways and his jawbone kept going the other way. He crashed to the floor.
He would never walk right again.
Butterball grabbed a heavy stool and rammed it toward me one-handed. I ducked and snatched up my cosh. With the bigger man off-balance I kicked at the hand holding the stool and brought the cosh into his groin. The noise he made would have been comical under other circumstances, a high-pitched “Ooof.” As he folded, I drove my foot through the side of his head—his temple to be exact. His eyes had already rolled back before he hit the floor.
A concussion at best. Permanent damage at worst.
I spun to meet Sammy and dole out the same to him, but he was aiming a gun at my chest. A large-caliber auto. Way beyond my reach.
“Put it down,” I said, on my toes, fists clenched. “Come on, you and me.”
“You crazy,” he said.
A hand on his shoulder urged him to move aside. Umbrella Man made his way out of the room, followed by the Man in Tan. The first was taller than what I took to be his boss, and well built.
The short time that had passed between noticing the gun and that moment gave me time to think, and now I heard sobbing in the back room and remembered the woman. She, and the guy holding onto her, had barely moved. The guy watched me through sunglasses, and his bald pate and sharp suit made him look like a mafia goon in a cheap TV show. I tried to put them out of my mind, both the Goon and the girl. Told myself it was none of my business.
A quiet corner of my mind asked, Doesn’t she deserve the same attention as Sarah?
The two you
nger Vietnamese customers had found their feet, unsure what to do. They were scrawny and they had no weapons. The barman watched.
“You know what happened to Sarah Stiles,” I said to the Man in Tan.
“Indeed,” said the man. “Who are you? And how did you find this place? Was it the Giang problem again?”
I said, “Where. Is. Sarah?”
“So you are one of Vila Fanuco’s men?”
His English was good, better than Sammy’s. Spoken with a somewhat upper-crust accent, the Queen’s English rather than American. And what the hell was Giang? A person? A place?
“Yes, he is with Fanuco,” Sammy said.
“Wait, I’m not,” I said.
“He is. You heard him talking to me. He is here to kill me.”
The bastard weasely arsehole.
I said, “No, mister, I am not with Vila Fanuco. Sammy is playing both sides. Sir, I don’t wish you any harm, and I don’t want to hurt your business. I don’t even really give a crap about Gareth. I just need to know what happened to Sarah.”
“She is dead,” Sammy said again. To the Man in Tan he added, “I told him she was dead. He should go home.”
The Man in Tan adjusted his tie. “Perhaps we should show him.”
Umbrella Man stepped forward and, lightning-quick, jabbed at my windpipe. I gagged at the blow, readied my cosh, but the man was too damn quick. He swept my foot and I landed hard, gasping for breath. In seconds, the two young customers were on me and a piercing chemical smell filled my mouth and nose.
A cloth.
Smothering me.
Umbrella Man kneeling on my chest.
I had no option but to breathe it in. The clagging fumes filled my lungs. I tried to cough, tried to buck, anything to stop these people from doing as they wished.
And, as if a bag was being lowered over my face, my world faded to black.
Chapter Twenty-One
I drifted slowly on a rolling sea. My subconscious swayed me and my surfboard into deep troughs of blue, then I would rise and crest a swell to witness the ocean all around. The sun shone in a cloudless sky, but I was cold and rain fell upon my face. Slowly, the sun darkened, a grey-blue ball, misty and indistinct. Then it fell toward the horizon, dipping beneath it as my body shivered and the moon spread over the water like a hand. The wind blew harder. I breathed in, and water snorted up my nose, and I—
Opened my eyes.
Woodland. Trees. Night.
A rumble of thunder ground itself out overhead. Footsteps squelched. Rain pitter-pattered on every surface—the canopy of bushes and trees, the soggy ground, clothing. I shook water from my eyes. I heard someone say in accented English, “He is awake.”
A mass surged in my throat. I could not stop the vomiting. My head automatically lolled to the side, but chunks remained on my face and neck and chest. I knew, then, that I was being carried, hands and legs gripped by persons unseen.
My focus swirled with browns and blacks and a ghostly apparition that I thought may be the moon, but with the force of the rain I doubted it would be visible. Umbrella Man held my hands, my weight no problem. His leather jacket offered no protection from the elements but he didn’t seem to care. My cosh sat snug in his waistband. He wasn’t taking care of my finger either, so it felt like a rodent gnawing at the bone. Sammy hefted my legs. The Man in Tan strode alongside, his superb hair and tailored suit sheltered by the wide umbrella. He sensibly wore wellington boots. If the younger Vietnamese guys were present I could not see them.
I tried to find my voice but my brain could not yet form words, and I drifted again. The rain faded, and what sparse light there was, died.
I stood in the shallows of the beach. The blue twilight pressed in from all sides. Left and right, the sand stretched into the distance. No cliffs, no promenade, no cafe. I was so alone, I longed for the call of a hawker trying to flog me a piece of local art. I’d watched the moon before, splayed on the ripples, but now nothing shone, and I could not understand how I could still see so much.
I’d been here so many times, thinking—just thinking. About Roger Gorman, about my life, my death, about my father and my mother, and what the hell I was doing about all the things I wanted to change.
This was my thinking zone, my pondering place. I’d never once found an answer here. It was unlikely I ever would.
A slap woke me. Umbrella Man still held my arms, but Sammy had dropped my legs into a muddy recess. A torch shone in my eyes, flashing through my brain like cheese-wire. Was that the white glow I’d seen earlier? Probably. There was no sign of the moon now. Just the ground before me, and a dark expanse of absolutely nothing immediately ahead.
The Man in Tan formed a silhouette behind the powerful beam. “You were sent to kill my colleague here, correct?”
“No,” I said, the word bloated on my tongue.
Sammy tramped toward me. “YOU LIE!”
I was expecting a slap or a kick, but maybe the Man in Tan realized it was pointless.
He said, “Mr. Park, you come to my place of business just as I am selling one of Mr. Fanuco’s whores to an important client. You do not think this looks suspicious?”
“I’m looking,” I said, but struggled to finish the sentence. I managed, “For a girl.”
“You should kill him,” Sammy said.
My vision had virtually cleared and I allowed the rain to wash down my face. Trees lined one half of my peripheral vision, but a deep, black hole seemed to span the other.
I said, “I want to find Sarah Stiles. She’s just a kid—”
“I have no interest in what you want,” the Man in Tan said. “Did Mr. Fanuco promise he would help if you took care of his problem here?”
Umbrella Man hoisted me up so I was on my knees, holding my arms above my head.
I said, “I don’t know anything about any problem.”
The Man in Tan nodded. “Very brave. Sammy?”
Sammy crouched right in front of me. Kneeling there returned blood flow to the muscles in my legs, but I couldn’t summon a kick.
The Man in Tan said, “Kill him.”
Sammy looked at him sharply. “Me?”
“You.”
The big man shifted his grip. Now only one hand held me up so he could stand to one side.
“Come on,” I said. “Police know I was following you, Sammy.”
Sammy drew his gun.
I said, “They will come to you first.”
The Man in Tan turned his back, facing the dark hole that spanned further than I could see, like we were at the edge of a cliff, but I could hear no ocean.
He said, “Hurry up.”
I remembered one glimmer of hope, one tiny chance. A delay, at least. I said, “Giang,” and hoped I pronounced it right.
The Man in Tan bent so we were at the same eye-level. “Yes?”
I said, “I identified you through Giang. Sammy is lying to you.”
The man did not blink, just tilted his head. Allowed an almost inaudible, “Hmm.” If I could get him to expand a little, tell me what it meant, some hint … He was about to speak when I must have given something away. He blinked, stood upright, and said, “A word. Nothing more. You do not know if ‘Giang’ is a bar or a restaurant or the name of a song. Good try, Mr. Detective.”
My jaw clenched.
The Man in Tan laughed as he returned to that black, featureless view.
Sammy’s boots sucked mud behind me.
“I can pay you all,” I said. “I have money. A lot of money.”
Sammy paused. The Man in Tan nodded to Sammy, then looked back out into the dark.
Tears escaped my eyes and merged with the rain. I had no strength. “Don’t … Please…”
The hammer clicked back and the muzzle pressed in the back of my skull. I writhed hard, bucked with all the energy I could summon, but Umbrella Man’s grip merely tightened and held me a little higher. I was nothing but a hunk of meat in a butcher’s window.
Sammy took a
step back to avoid the splatter.
Umbrella Man angled his face away.
The Man in Tan stared across the void.
The gunshot rang out.
But nothing happened. Nothing, that is, except Umbrella Man spoke for the first time. In Vietnamese. Panicking.
More gunshots cracked all around and Umbrella Man released me and I flopped into the sludge. My captor tackled the Man in Tan, and both appeared to sink into the floor. I scrambled around, looking for Sammy, unsure why I was still alive. He lay, gurgling against a rock, gun in-hand. His chest pumped blood from a hole the size of a £2 coin.
Then it hit me like a fist in the chest—the phone call I made after the brush-off from Bertrand had paid off. Vila Fanuco was upset but grateful for my tip about Sammy. I told him my location, if he needed it, and also about the Man in Tan. He sounded even more pleased about that, and basically told me to hold tight outside the British-named bar. As usual, I hadn’t listened.
Still dazed, rain obscuring my line of sight, I relieved Sammy of the gun and made my way on all-fours in the direction of the two Vietnamese men, even though I had never fired a gun in my life. I stopped crawling at the lip of what I at first thought was a cliff, but now my vision had all-but adjusted to the dark I saw a regular shape about a thousand yards across and a hundred feet deep.
It was a quarry.
An old one, judging by the vegetation sprouting around the sides and down inside the bowl.
So here I was again. A more experienced man instructed me to wait for help but I blundered in anyway with no real plan, despite knowing full well I needed an escape route. No, Adam Park doesn’t need to think. Doesn’t need to plan. And without that forethought, some bad men had transported me to a quarry to execute me.
What a professional.
Now, presumably, my saviors were descending. Skilled fighters, well-armed, snipers. Highly-motivated individuals with a grudge to bear out. Soldiers. Street-soldiers, but soldiers nonetheless.
I could lie here and wait for them to do their thing, and the crackle of automatic gunfire over the next ridge suggested they were doing just that. And yet…