by R. J. Jagger
She ran a finger across his lips.
“No one’s going to know anything,” she said. “Just you and me.”
“That’s not the issue,” Teffinger said. “The issue is that I came back tonight because I wanted to ask you some questions.”
She studied him.
“Questions about what?”
“You remember Monday night when I was in the club, right?”
Yes.
She did.
“At some point during that night, someone drugged me,” he said.
“What are you saying? That it was me?”
Teffinger shook his head.
No.
No.
No.
“I’m not suggesting in any way, shape or form that it was you,” he said. “I’ve heard rumors that guys sometimes get drugged in the clubs and wanted to know if that happens in Serengeti.”
“No.”
The answer was quick.
And firm.
“Are you sure?”
“Serengeti’s a clean place,” she said. “That kind of thing happens but not there.”
“So where then, in Soi Cowboy?”
She thought about it.
“I’m personally not involved in any of that stuff, so I don’t have any direct knowledge,” she said. “I’ve only heard talk.”
He said nothing.
Waiting.
“Cheeks is one of the places and Flower Den is the other,” she said.
Okay.
Good.
Cheeks.
Flower Den.
“What happens there?”
“From what I know, the girl will work the guy to go into the back room for a blowjob. If he’s on the edge but is taking too long, he may get something slipped into his drink. He ends up going back there, but then wakes up in an alley with an empty wallet.”
“Does the drug effect the memory?”
She shrugged.
“You’re way beyond me,” she said. “Who’s this woman you’re seeing? Is she the one you were with that night?”
No.
It wasn’t.
“Someone else,” he said.
“That’s no fair,” she said. “You played around with this other woman Monday but won’t play around with me tonight.”
“The woman I’m involved with, I didn’t meet her until yesterday,” Teffinger said.
“And you’re already being true to her?”
“Being true isn’t the right phrase,” Teffinger said.
Lamdon chuckled.
“Sure, whatever.” A pause, then, “Turn here.”
Teffinger looked at her to see what direction.
She meant left.
He was in the wrong lane but swung over at the last second, almost getting clipped by a truck.
HE LOOKED OVER at Lamdon and said, “Can you do a favor for me?”
Maybe.
Like what?
“Are you working tomorrow night?”
“No, why?”
“I want you to go to those two clubs with me, Cheeks and Flower Den. I want to get my hands on some of that drug they use.”
“Why?”
“I want to know what it is.”
“Why don’t you get your girlfriend to do it? Your girlfriend that you met yesterday.”
“It’s complicated.”
She stared out the window.
Then said, “Stop here.”
“Why?”
“This is where I live.” She stepped out, closed the door and headed for the entrance. Then she hesitated, came back and opened the door. “Get a pen and write down this number.”
He did.
“I’ll think about it. Call me tomorrow.”
“Really.”
“I said I’ll think about it, not that I’ll necessarily do it. Tell your girlfriend she’s a lucky woman.”
“I would but she’d never believe me.”
59
Day 3—August 15
Wednesday Night
PAWANA-LIN ARRIVED AT DECK’S BUILDING a few minutes before midnight wearing an expensive long-sleeve shirt tucked into a short black skirt.
No bra.
No panties.
High heels.
Mildly drunk.
Seriously sexy.
Smoke from the club hung in her clothes.
She looked over her shoulder to be sure no one had followed and ran from her car to the entry. She rang the bell, got buzzed in, and took the elevator to the fourth floor. A few candles provided the only light. Deck waved to her from a bed at the opposite end of the room, not much more than a silhouette in the darkness. An exotic woman muscled up from a lying position and studied her as she walked over.
Deck was naked.
A vision.
But not as much a one as the woman next to him.
Pawana-Lin unbuttoned her skirt on the way and had it off by the time she got to the bed. She swirled it around in a circle and threw it over her shoulder, not watching where it landed.
Keeping her eyes locked on the woman.
A predator studying its prey.
Then she pushed the woman down on her back, straddled her and pinned her arms above her head.
“Who’s this?” she asked Deck.
He chuckled.
“This is Chayada,” he said. “Your co-conspirator.”
“Chayada my co-conspirator, huh?”
She kissed the woman on the mouth, released her grip on the woman’s wrists and ran her fingers teasingly down her arms. She traced circles on her captive’s nipples until they got hard. Chayada bit her lower lip and shut her eyes.
“I like her,” Pawana-Lin said. “She’s cute.”
“Yeah, she’s not bad.”
She moved farther up on Chayada’s chest, grabbed her wrists and pulled her arms even tighter above her head. Then she wiggled up until her crotch was almost on Chayada’s mouth.
“Does she like girls?”
Deck raised an eyebrow.
“I don’t know,” he said. Then to Chayada, “Do you?”
“I do if she does,” Chayada said.
Pawana-Lin lifted her skirt up and off, over her head. Then she sank her weight down until she was on Chayada’s mouth.
“You first,” she said.
AFTER THE WOMEN pleasured one another, they gave Deck a two-for-the-price-of-one blowjob. Then the three of them laid back on the bed, watched the candlelight flicker on the ceiling and talked about how things would work.
When Pawana-Lin finally got around to leaving, Deck handed her an envelope full of money.
“Don’t deposit that anywhere,” he said. “We can’t have anything happen out of the ordinary. Put it in a safe deposit box if you’re worried about it.”
She lifted up her skirt and flashed as she headed for the elevator.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I know what I’m doing.”
60
Day 4—August 16
Thursday Morning
THURSDAY MORNING, Wing and Jamaica hid the paintings on the junk in the gunnels behind the engine compartment, then jumped on the first plane to Bangkok. The plan was to return in a week or so—after Po Sin’s death cooled off—and smuggle them by private boat or plane into Thailand.
Ten minutes after they landed at BIA, Wing got a call from Jack Vutipakdee wanting to know how the investigation was going into his daughter’s murder.
“I have a P.I. on it,” Wing said.
“And?”
“And I’m going to call her today to get an update.”
“Let me know what she says.”
“Will do.”
“This is important.”
“I haven’t forgotten.”
Wing hung up.
TEN SECONDS LATER the phone rang again and a man’s voice came through, in Thai, but as a second language rather than native. “I trust you got the photographs I sent you.”
There was a slight accent to the words.
/>
“I did.”
“Do you know what I did last night?”
No.
He didn’t.
“I spent the evening watching your music videos. I have to admit, I never get tired of them. You really have a gift, do you know that?
Wing wrinkled his face.
“Why don’t we quit screwing around and get right to the good part,” he said. “Tell me how much it’s going to take to get you out of my life.”
The man laughed.
“You think this is about money? Money is so mundane, so boring. I’m going to get out of your life, just like you want. I’m going to take my copies of the pictures and make sure they never existed. In return, you’re going to do one small favor for me, to show your appreciation.”
“Like what?”
“There’s an American in town named Nick Teffinger,” the man said. “He’s staying with a woman named Jinka Savaveenin. She’s a District 8 detective, not that it makes any difference. Get a pen, here’s her address.”
Wing wrong the number on the back of a business card.
“Got it,” he said.
“Good. What I want you to do is make Teffinger’s heart stop beating.”
“Why?”
“Just do it,” the man said. “You have twenty-four hours.”
The connection died.
WHEN HE LOOKED over at Jamaica, she was staring at him.
“Who was that?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I have time.”
He kissed her.
“I’ll tell you all about it when it’s over,” he said.
“Tell me now.”
He grunted.
“The most important part of a story is the ending,” he said. “I’m not sure how this one ends yet.”
A beat.
“You don’t trust me,” she said.
Wrong.
He did.
“Then tell me what’s going on,” she said.
He hesitated.
“Let me think about it,” he said. “Right now my brain is spinning.”
61
Day 4—August 16
Thursday Morning
KNIVES IN HAND, Kanjana and Prarie headed into the dark bedroom one careful step at a time. At first, it appeared empty. They heard nothing, they saw nothing. They headed deeper in, not speaking, ready to lash out. But they found no one, not there or anywhere else in the house. They got the hell out of there and checked into a hotel.
Kanjana never saw who attacked her.
All she knew is that she was asleep on the couch when she smelled something nasty and felt a cloth over her mouth. She struggled briefly but was already passing out. She woke at some point later to find herself naked and hogtied.
That’s when she screamed.
“Why didn’t he kill you when he had the chance?” Prarie asked. “That’s what I don’t get.”
Kanjana shrugged.
“Apparently he likes to play first.”
“Weird.”
That was last night.
Now it was morning.
PRARIE WOKE UP Thursday morning in a nice bed in a nice room, next to a still-sleeping but very much alive Kanjana. Her first thought was that the light creeping in around the window coverings was too strong, meaning a good portion of the morning had slipped away. Her second thought was that she dropped the phone last night and never went back to get it.
She looked at her watch.
10:52 a.m.
Damn it!
She took a two-minute shower, got dressed as fast as she could, took one last look at Kanjana’s sleeping face, bounded down the stairwell with water running off her hair, trotted through the lobby and jumped into a taxi.
“Airport!”
AT THE AIRPORT, she checked the boards and jotted down the arrival times for flights from Paris. The first arrival was in fifteen minutes. Wearing sunglasses, she took a position in a coffee shop where the passengers from that flight would have to walk past.
Then she waited to see if her husband showed up.
Or, if not him, one of his acquaintances.
Or anyone she recognized.
Sophie’s killer.
Fifteen minutes past the plane’s arrival time, people started to walk by the coffee shop speaking French. Prarie studied the faces. They came fast and in clumps, but there was no one she recognized. She waited for an additional ten minutes for stragglers, then scouted out a surveillance position for the next scheduled arrival.
For some reason, she felt eyes on the back of her head.
She turned.
No one seemed familiar.
No one was staring at her.
Everything was normal.
Weird.
62
Day 4—August 16
Thursday Morning
TEFFINGER WOKE THRUSDAY MORNING to the sound of Jinka blow-drying her hair in the bathroom. He headed in, wrapped his arms around her from behind and nibbled on her neck. She turned and said something he didn’t expect. “I took a cab down to the river last night. You weren’t there. Where were you?”
His first instinct was to lie.
To say he was there.
Somewhere in the shadows.
Somewhere she didn’t see him.
His second instinct was that his first instinct was wrong. “I went somewhere else,” he said.
“Where?”
“I’d rather not get into it.”
“Why not?”
“It’s personal.”
Jinka looked at him hard.
“You smelled like perfume when you got back.”
He hesitated.
Then said, “It’s not what you think.”
“Look,” she said. “Whether you like me or not is your business, but I don’t want you playing me.”
“I’m not,” he said.
“I can take a lot of things, but one thing I can’t take is being lied to.”
“I understand.”
“Have you ever lied to me?”
He hesitated.
Pretending he knew nothing about Tookta’s murder was a lie.
Pretending he wasn’t a murderer was a lie.
Pretending he had interviewed people at Serengeti was a lie.
“Yes,” he said. “Technically the answer is yes, but everything I’ve said about the way I feel for you and everything I’ve said about what you mean to me, all that’s a hundred percent true. And I’m not lying to you right now when I say you’re the only woman in my life.”
She studied him.
“What did you lie to me about?”
He flicked hair out of his face.
“I can’t tell you that.”
She stood there, motionless, then put her arms around his neck and laid her head on his chest.
“You’re a difficult man to be with sometimes, Teffinger. Do you know that?”
“That’s what I hear.”
“Thanks for being honest with me by telling me you lied,” she said. “You could have just lied again. I’m going to figure it out, though—what it was you lied to me about.”
Teffinger tiled his head.
“You won’t need to figure it out, I’m going to tell you when the time’s right.”
FIVE MINUTES LATER in the kitchen, Teffinger reached into a drawer, pulled out four photographs of Jinka’s boss, Petchpon, taken through a telephoto lens, and tossed them on the table.
“I found these when I was looking for the coffee filters,” he said. “You want to tell me about them?”
She scooped them up.
“Those don’t concern you.”
Teffinger almost pressed it but didn’t.
“I’ve been thinking about Mint,” he said. “We should get in contact with her cell phone provider and find out who she was talking to before she got killed. Maybe one of them will know something.”
63
Day 4—August 16
Thursday Morning
JAMAICA WAS UNUSUALLY QUIET on the drive from the airport to Wing’s loft. Wing knew why and said, “Okay, here’s what’s going on, but you have to promise to take it to the grave.”
Of course.
Absolutely.
“All right,” Wing said. “What happened is that someone close to me got sucked into a bad situation a while back. She ended up doing something she shouldn’t have and got herself in a terrible mess. She needed my help to get out and I wasn’t about to deny her.”
“So you helped a friend—” Jamaica said.
He nodded.
“Who?”
He hesitated.
“I promise, it’s going to the grave,” she said.
“Okay, it was my assistant, Yingfan.”
“Yingfan?”
Right.
Her.
“She’s such a good person.”
“She is,” Wing said. “Don’t ever mention this to her.”
“I won’t.”
Wing slowed down to avoid running up the ass end of a Tuk-Tuk that cut in front of him.
“Anyway, there was no way to help her without getting myself a little dirty,” he said. “I didn’t mind that much because I never thought it would come to anything but then something happened. A stranger called and said he had some photographs he wanted me to see. He told me to go to Nana Plaza at a certain day and time and sit at a particular place. Things were so weird that I did it, just to see if something was going on that I should be worried about. A woman from one of the establishments came down the walkway and delivered an envelope to me. Inside were four photographs. They weren’t good.”
“Can I see them?”
“Maybe at some point,” he said. “I gave them to my attorney, a man named Sarapong, who’s trying to figure out who gave them to the woman who delivered them to me.”
Jamaica frowned.
“That seems dangerous, giving them to someone else.”
“They’re protected under the attorney-client privilege,” Wing said. “Plus, I’ve known Sarapong a long time. He’d never do anything to hurt me. Anyway, I’ve been sitting back and waiting for the man to call. He finally did, which is the call I just got back at the airport. I thought he would want money. It turns out that he doesn’t want money. What he wants is for me to kill an American who’s in town, someone named Nick Teffinger.”