by R. J. Jagger
“That was a rental,” she said.
12
Day 2—August 14
Tuesday Morning
JINKA’S SKIRT RODE UP as she drove. Given the fact that they were headed to the scene of a murder committed by Teffinger himself, he was astonished that he could even let the woman’s legs enter his thoughts.
But they did.
Big cities meant big messes and Bangkok by the light of day was no exception. The streets were laid out in a random, confusing maze of angles and curves, probably because the city grew outwards over time from the Phraya. Whatever the reason, they made the insanely thick traffic even more stalemated. A thick haze of pollution choked the air. Waste water seeped up through broken drains. Street vendors prepared food in the open while half-starved dogs hovered nearby. Beggars were rampant, many of them women holding babies.
Hard lives were everywhere.
Noise was everywhere.
People were everywhere.
“Tell me about Aspen Leigh’s radio show back in the United States,” Jinka said.
Teffinger told her.
Aspen had an insanely-popular, never-politically-correct morning show called Hot Talk. Most mornings she’d have a guest or two and they’d cue up some weird topic, which more often than not had something to do with sex or dating or relationships. Listeners would call in and say stupid things. “I listened to her a couple of times, but to be honest she was a little too over the top for my taste. She had the ratings though, I’ll give her that.”
“Did she piss people off?”
Teffinger smiled.
“She ruffled feathers, that was part of her job,” he said. “But if your question is whether she pissed people off to the point where someone would follow her to Bangkok and kill her, the answer is no.”
“No?”
No.
“She was one of those people that you had to like, even when you didn’t. Does that make sense?”
Strangely, yes.
“AS I UNDERSTAND IT, she came to Bangkok to talk to the people at the Thai Foon Group,” Jinka said.
Teffinger nodded.
True.
“Her contract in San Francisco was up in three months,” he said. “Thai Foon wanted to set up a morning show very similar to what she was already doing, to be broadcast in English. They wanted a foreigner who would bring a fresh flavor. My understanding is that they were talking to Aspen and two other people, one of them was someone named Heather St. Croix, who’s from London.”
“So there was competition,” Jinka said.
Teffinger shrugged.
“Is your theory that Heather or someone else killed her?”
“I don’t have a theory,” she said. “I’m just asking questions.”
Teffinger exhaled.
“Between you and me, I don’t think she was that serious about the job. I think she was just trying to position herself to leverage a better contract in San Francisco.”
“So, she would probably be coming back home?”
Right.
That.
“Who would have a motive to not want her to return?” Jinka asked. “Was someone else vying for her job?”
Teffinger smiled.
“You sure have a lot of thoughts,” he said.
“Yes I do,” she said. “Here’s another one. What’s the chance that she staged her own disappearance, to get some fresh material for her show or improve her visibility or something like that.”
Teffinger frowned and pushed hair out of his face.
“Zero chance. Jena’s worried to death. Aspen would never do that to her.”
Jinka’s legs forced his gaze downward.
When he looked up, Jinka was looking right at him.
She grinned but said nothing.
A minute or so later, her skirt rode up just a touch more. She said, “We had a development in the case this morning. I tried to call you but didn’t get an answer.”
“What kind of development?”
“One of her credit cards was used.”
“Where?”
“At a liquor store, for a case of vodka and four cartons of cigarettes,” Jinka said.
“That wasn’t her,” Teffinger said. “No way.”
“I already know that.”
“She doesn’t smoke,” he added.
13
Day 2—August 14
Tuesday Morning
WING AND JAMAICA LANDED IN BANGKOK shortly before noon and took a taxi to his place, which was a pricy riverside penthouse loft with an open floor plan, vaulted ceilings and expensive textures. Jamaica stepped onto the terrace, took in the twenty-story view of the bustling Phraya River below and said, “If you’re trying to impress me, it’s working.”
Wing punched a button on a remote and Jamaica’s demo, Say It, spilled out of crystal-clear speakers.
“It’s the only thing I’ve listened to in a week.”
She gave him a sideways look.
“I’m serious,” he said. Then he looked at his watch and handed her a key-card. “I have to run.”
“To where?”
“Business.”
“Take me with you,” she said.
“Can’t. While I’m gone, treat this place as your own. Snoop around all you want but just don’t look under the bed, no matter what you do.”
“Why? What’s under the bed?”
“Just don’t do it,” he said. “I’m going to call Yingfan and have her come over and get you situated.”
“Who’s Yingfan?”
“My assistant,” Wing said. “Whatever she says about me, don’t believe her.”
BANGKOK’S SECOND-MOST NOTORIOUS adult haunt, Nana Plaza, was a three-storied, rectangular stacking of dozens and dozens of bars, sex clubs and shady establishments that encircled a large open-air courtyard filled with even more bars and clubs. The complex consumed a city block. There the lust-drunk wanderer could get just about anything he wanted, from a simple drink at a go-go bar to the best backroom blowjob on the planet. The women were young, petit, spirited and almost as gorgeous as the ladyboys. Wing used to frequent the place in his earlier days and still attributed a lot of the sexual tension in his videos to those drunken nights in his formative years.
This was first time he’d been here by the light of day.
It wasn’t pretty.
Without the long shadows, blinking neon and crowded tension, the place took on a rough, gritty, almost depressing edge. The day-crew women were there, and to be fair some of them were fine, but most of them had wear and tear.
Wing bought a beer at a top floor bar, tipped the waitress generously, took a bar stool at a wooden table on the walkway, and stared down over the railing into the courtyard.
His heart raced.
His watch said 12:55.
Five minutes to game time.
One o’clock came and went.
Nothing happened.
A minute passed.
Then another.
Then another.
Goddamn it!
Come on.
Come on.
Come on.
Then a woman wearing a short black skirt and lots of skin walked down the wooden broadway, handed him a large envelope and said, “This is for you.”
Wing resisted his instinct to tear it open immediately and instead said, “What’s your name?”
“I’m not in the middle of this,” she said.
“Who gave this to you?”
“No one,” she said. “Don’t follow me.”
Then she turned, walked down three doors to a club called YaYa Bang and disappeared inside. Wing drank the rest of his bottle in one long swallow and walked in the opposite direction.
Down at street level, he found a place off the beaten path and opened the envelope.
Four photographs were inside.
Four photographs that made his chest tighten.
14
Day 2—August 14
Tuesday Morning<
br />
AFTER KANJANA WENT TO WORK, Prarie photographed the pages of the journal with a digital camera, uploaded the images into Kanjana’s laptop, and then transferred them to a flash drive which she stuck in her front pants pocket.
There.
Done.
She opened the safe to find lots of papers inside, all in Thai, as well as a smaller safe which was padlocked. She put the journal on top of the smaller safe, closed the door, turned the tumbler and jiggled the handle to be sure it was secure, then headed out the front door to see what the neighborhood was like.
She was free.
Free.
Free.
Free.
For the first time since age seventeen, she was free. One thing for sure, she’d spend the rest of her life never getting entrapped again. But how do you do that? How do you know which person would stay sweet and which one would turn toxic? Obviously gut instincts weren’t enough.
Questions.
Questions best left for another day.
Right now, the only thing that mattered was walking down the road. She definitely wasn’t in Paris any longer. Instead of sidewalk cafes, winding streets and historic architecture, there were narrow unimproved roads, thick vegetation and shoulder-to-shoulder wooden structures up and down both banks of the canal.
The water was more active than the Seine, if that was possible.
Water taxis in the form of fast, narrow longtail boats scurried morning commuters east towards Bangkok proper, returning empty or near-empty and brushing close enough to throw spray on one another.
Dangerous.
That’s how it looked, although no one seemed to pay it much mind.
Free.
Free.
Free.
Free at last.
SHE WALKED for a full forty-five minutes past houses, one-trick mom-and-pop shops and crude waterway eateries before turning around. The morning clouds burned off and turned to a haze.
She felt good.
Better than good, actually.
But she was already done with this part of the world.
She needed to get into the guts of the city where the refined pleasures were.
She needed to be surrounded by money and people of importance and accomplishments.
She needed decadence.
She needed sophistication.
She needed attention.
When she got back to Kanjana’s, the front door was hanging open.
Weird.
She stepped through and closed it behind her.
“Kanjana?”
No answer.
“Kanjana, you here?”
Silence.
Her breath tightened.
She headed for the bedroom and found the closet door open, not how she left it.
She stepped inside.
What she saw she could hardly believe.
The safe was gone.
Totally, absolutely gone.
The floor where it had been bolted was ripped and splintered. She pictured two men, maybe more, jacking it out with a crowbar, carrying to a pickup truck and screeching down the road.
15
Day 2—August 14
Tuesday Morning
THE NEON DRAGON SIGN across the street from Tookta's apartment, which seemed to fill the world last night with its fiery flames, now sat unlit and demure over a blue door that said Dragon’s Breath Bar. Jinka pulled into a parking spot down the street, killed the engine and said, “We’re here.”
Teffinger swallowed.
This was it.
It was time to decide if he had the internal fortitude to view the horror he’d committed last night. The body would be cold and blue, the eyes would be shrunken and lifeless and the blood would be brown. The universal odor of death would seep out of the victim’s every pore.
“What’s wrong?” Jinka asked.
Teffinger tossed his hair.
“Nothing.”
“Something’s wrong,” she said.
He was about to deny it when his cell phone rang and the voice of Sydney Heatherwood came through. “You didn’t turn yourself in I hope,” she said.
“Hold on.”
He looked at Jinka and said, “Business. I need to take this.”
She nodded, headed for a gray apartment building across the street and said over her shoulder, “Number 15, when you’re done.”
“Two minutes,” he said.
THEN TO SYDNEY, “No, I haven’t.”
“Good,” she said. “Do you want some advice?”
No.
He didn’t.
“Good, because here it is,” she said. “Get out of Bangkok, right now, this second. Get your ass back to San Francisco. I’ll go over there and pick up the Aspen Leigh investigation.”
“I’m already here.”
“Yeah, I know that, but—”
Teffinger frowned.
“I need to resolve this,” he said.
“Nick—”
“I can’t live my life running from myself,” he said. “Something needs to happen. I’m not sure what yet, but something.”
Sydney exhaled.
“Do you have a pencil and paper?” she asked.
He did.
“Write this down.”
She gave him a number and a name, Kanjana.
He wrote them down.
“I made a call this morning to a friend of mine in New York by the name of Rex Browne who’s in the private investigation business, to get you the name of someone there in Bangkok who can help,” she said. “He made some calls and recommends the woman whose name I just gave you, who’s a P.I. with a reputation for being discrete. Give her a call. Browne thinks you can set her up to be a safe harbor.”
“Okay.”
“Teffinger, I’m serious,” Sydney said. “Promise me you’ll call her.”
He hesitated.
“Teffinger.”
“Okay, I will.”
“You will, what?”
“I’ll call her.”
“Don’t renege,” she said. “You need someone who can get you out of the country if it comes to it. Talk to her and see if she’s the one. If she’s not, let me know and I’ll get you another name.”
“Okay.”
“You can’t be alone there Nick,” she said. “It’s too dangerous. You don’t know the land.”
HE HUNG UP and looked at the apartment building across the street. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t go back into that building, not now, not ever. He headed down the street, walking briskly, already feeling saner and working on an excuse to feed Jinka.
This was better.
This was easier.
Then he stopped, shook his head with disgust and headed back.
Apartment 15.
16
Day 2—August 14
Tuesday Morning
WING CLOSED THE ENVELOPE, sealing the photos in darkness, and called Sarapong, his attorney. “I want to meet with you, as soon as possible.”
“I’m free right now.”
“Good.”
“You sound weird. Is everything okay?”
“No, nothing’s okay.”
Half an hour later Wing stepped into a marble-walled elevator with flat-panel TVs in the corners broadcasting world news. Thirty-two floors later he stepped out of that elevator, directly into the into the reception area of Niratpatta and Yatap, Ltd. The receptionist spoke into a handless telephone and two seconds later said, “He’ll be right with you.”
“Thanks.”
“Coffee?”
“No thanks.”
Thirty seconds later Sarapong stepped into the lobby. He was one of Bangkok’s most prominent entertainment lawyers, short and wiry, with a crooked mouth, bloodshot eyes and a taste for ladies out of his league. Wing got turned onto him by a friend ten years ago and never used anyone else since. Sarapong could draft entertainment contracts with the best of them, but his real talent was in copyright and intellectual property laws, both Th
ai and international.
More important, he could be trusted.
So far, in all that time, the man hadn’t disclosed a secret, leaked news to the press or done anything other than act in a strictly professional manner.
They headed down the corridor.
Past expensive art and ancient artifacts dramatically displayed in lighted, recessed wall-cubicles.
Success.
Success.
Success.
INSIDE SARAPONG’S OFFICE, with the door closed, the attorney said, “So what’s going on? You got another project brewing?”
“Actually I do,” Wing said. “Jamaica Tam. Remember the day you first heard her name.”
“Jamaica Tam, huh?”
Wing nodded.
Right.
Jamaica Tam.
“She’s going to be big?”
Wing leaned back in his seat.
“I’m going to do something for you that I haven’t done for anyone else,” he said. “I’m going to email you an advance copy of one of her songs. Just be absolutely positive it stays secure.”
No problem.
No problem at all.
“Can’t wait,” Sarapong said.
Wing exhaled.
“It will blow you away, guaranteed. She’s not the reason I’m here, though.” He set the envelope on the attorney’s desk and slowly pushed it across. “This is the reason I’m here.”
17
Day 2—August 14
Tuesday Morning
THANKS TO MICHELLE LECAN tearing up Prarie’s cell phone back in Paris, she had to find a pay phone, which turned into a half hour hiking project. Kanjana was more upset that Prarie expected when she told her the news about the safe.
“Goddamn it! Please say you’re messing with me.”
“I wish I was.”
“Meet me back at the house.”
Prarie hadn’t been there for five minutes when Kanjana screeched to a stop in front of the structure and headed straight for the closet. Then she stared at the empty space where the safe had been. She put her back against the bedroom wall, slid down until she hit the floor and put her head between her knees.
After a few quiet moments she looked up and said, “This isn’t good.”