by Harlan Wolff
He had an open return ticket to Bangkok so he called downstairs and asked them to book him a seat for that afternoon. Carl put on sunglasses to hide his yellow eyes, summoned strength from who knows where, and got a taxi to the airport. The only thing he could remember about the airport was dragging his bag across the airport floor because he had been too weak to lift it. The bag had only weighed eight kilos.
The next few weeks were a blur but even in his confused state Carl immediately made a decision to avoid all alcohol and unhealthy food for a year. He moved into a wooden shack surrounded by Bangkok’s poor due to lack of funds and his inability to work. It was not a bad year as he soon got a grasp of slum politics. Carl’s liver recovered and his Thai became fluent. He walked out of the slum community into a new decade. The year was 1980.
He had been totally penniless but that was not a problem. The first task was to survive, always survival first. He came out of his wooden shack fluent in Thai and having developed a better understanding of the intricacies of unseen Thailand. Carl returned to his old haunts, but this time he had something foreigners needed and were willing to pay for.
Carl landed at Macau airport remembering how disastrous his last visit had turned out and hoping better luck would be waiting for him. Maybe the gods of gambling would pat him on the head and say, ‘Good boy Carl, it’s your turn today’. Mere mortals create such dreams and think such thoughts.
He checked into his hotel, took a shower, and then went to the Venetian and took a walk through the poker room. The target was not there. Carl assumed that the best games started in the evening and went on through the night. They typically did. The target was probably sleeping all day and would be back to the tables later. Carl had a few hours to kill.
He left the Venetian and went for a walk in the old town to see if he could find anything familiar. He found the old square and church built by the Portuguese. Beyond that it was unrecognizable. A modern mecca for Chinese gamblers and as almost every Chinese is a gambler, no expense had been spared to lure them through the doors. Carl went back to his room at the Wynn Casino to escape the madness. A period of meditation on the art of poker before the sun went down seemed like a very good idea.
That evening he took up position outside the poker room so he could see his target arrive. Carl didn’t have to wait long. Inman walked quickly, in gavotte steps, his head switching left and right in perfect time as if his neck was wired to his feet. He was tough and wiry in the way that old soldiers are. His skin was dirty brown like old leather and he had the most piercing eyes Carl had ever seen. Like a hawk’s eyes, an old hungry hawk.
The staff and the room manager treated Inman like he owned the place. For the first time Carl felt totally alien, a complete outsider and a long way from home. He thought about leaving, getting his bag and going to the airport. Nothing was stopping him. His client was dead and he had enough money to disappear for a while. Take a holiday and forget he had ever heard of these people. Without doubt the most sensible course of action. Carl had always understood other people’s madness better than his own. If someone in a similar situation sought his advice Carl would have provided ten excellent reasons to walk away. Carl however, of course, walked into the poker room and proceeded to act like a tourist.
Carl had dressed for the part. Black soft leather Aldo Brue shoes without socks, black Gucci jeans, black Zegna shirt, and a black cashmere blazer from a tailor in Milan. He looked like a tourist planning a big night out on the town. A tourist with pockets full of money was exactly how he wanted to be perceived. The modern poker players typically wear nylon and spandex topped off with a baseball cap so it is not hard to make an impression in a poker room.
Carl went over to the board and looked at the various games that were available. Inman had been directed to the table that required a player to buy a minimum of HK$50,000 worth of chips before sitting down. Fortunately the table still had empty seats available.
Carl asked the room manager about the games and intentionally showed no interest in the low stakes seats that were available. When the room manager said there was a seat free at a larger stakes table Carl told him that would suit him just fine. The room manager had a sad-faced pockmarked boy take him to the table and seat him. ‘The game’s afoot,’ Carl thought. He liked the words and as Conan Doyle had stolen them from Shakespeare Carl didn’t mind stealing them from Doyle’s creation, Sherlock Holmes.
“Good evening,” Carl said to the six players at the table, expecting formality to cement his appearance as a tourist with money to throw away.
Five players ignored him but Inman answered.
“Welcome to the game. Is this your first time here?”
“Oh yes!” Carl told him. “I’ve always wanted to play live poker.”
“Ah, so where do you play?”
Carl needed to set up the table if he was going to get an edge over them.
“Online. I play online. Sure, I know it’s fixed, silly to play really. Does anybody actually win there?” Carl said in the fashion of the majority of disgruntled losers.
“You’re right. It must be fixed. Here is much safer,” Inman told him patronizingly. He bought Carl’s whining act and looked pleased.
Cards were dealt and hands were won and lost. The other players were all Asian. There was a Japanese, a Thai and three Chinese who had their own conversation going and ignored everybody else. The Thai player was talking to Inman and it was obvious they knew each other well. Carl noted that Inman’s Thai was pretty good, rigid and unnatural like most foreigners but his vocabulary was extensive.
They had both assumed that nobody at the table understood them so were openly discussing a land deal, Thai style. The Thai player’s face looked familiar but Carl couldn’t match the face to a name. He had a vague memory that he was somewhere on the fringe of politics, a deal maker and power broker. They were discussing how they could best steal 1,000 rai of land from the forestry department, bribe the land department to issue ownership documents, and then put it on the market for a small fortune. Inman started watching Carl with his peripheral vision and Carl realized that he was sensing that he was listening in.
He turned and stared Carl down with his hawk like eyes and asked him, “Have you ever been to Thailand?”
“I passed through a few times.”
“Thought you might have,” he said as he stared Carl down. He was very interested in him all of a sudden.
Inman and Carl were eyeing each other like two warriors across a battlefield who had lost all interest in the carnage separating them. Carl had hands, he raised and Inman folded. When he made a move Carl got out of his way.
An uneventful hour passed. Then Carl looked at his two cards and saw a pair of nines. Inman raised the bet to two thousand and Carl called with the intention of getting out quick if the flop didn’t bring another nine. The young Chinese man on Carl’s left called so there were three players in the pot. The flop came 9-4-4 and Inman bet seven thousand. Carl only called his bet to trap him and then the young Chinese man pushed all his chips into the middle of the table. Inman pondered his cards and then reluctantly folded. Carl called the bet immediately with his monster of a full house. The player to his left turned up a King and a 4, both diamonds. Carl’s full house was only vulnerable to another 4 coming, which would give the Chinese player four of a kind. The turn card was a blank and the river card was also not a 4. Carl had increased his stack of chips to around HK$110,000.
“That was exciting,” Carl said.
“You too lucky. Shit lucky,” the young Chinese man said.
“The winners make jokes and the losers say shut up and deal,” Inman chirped, happy that he had folded his cards.
Carl thought of leaving with his winnings but he was there for a reason and all he had done so far was get lucky.
“I am just a student of the game and as a mere student I often find the game bloody murder,” Carl said to the table but looking at Inman. “Do you find the game to be bloody murde
r?”
Inman looked at Carl curiously but did not answer. He continued to watch Carl as the game continued. Another hour passed with several dramatic hands but none involving Carl who had decided to play very tight and hold on to his money.
Then he looked down and saw a 7–8 of clubs, not much of a hand but he was the big blind so last to act before the flop. Inman raised his usual amount of two thousand and Carl was the only caller. The flop was spread in the centre of the green baize. It was a 5 of clubs, 6 of clubs, and a Jack of diamonds. Carl bet six thousand and Inman raised the bet to twenty thousand.
Carl had a monster draw. He assumed Inman had a hand like Ace-Jack, which ruled out the possibility of him having a larger flush draw than Carl. So, that meant that any 4, any 9, or any club should win it for Carl. The 4 or 9 of clubs would give him a straight flush but that seemed like overkill. There were probably fifteen cards in the remainder of the deck that would win Carl the pot. With two cards still to come that made him a sixty per cent favourite to win the hand. That, plus what was already in the pot made it a good bet, a good raise to be more precise. However, Carl still had HK$100,000 in front of him and did not want to lose it all on one hand. Carl, unlike Inman, had limited funds to play with, so he just called the bet.
The turn card was a 4 of hearts giving Carl the highest straight possible. He wanted all of his chips in the middle now! Carl decided to be patient and therefore he checked to Inman. Who, without hesitation, bet HK$36,000 and Carl happily pushed all of his chips out in front of him.
“All in,” Carl said as calmly as possible.
Inman immediately called his bet making the total in the pot HK$217,000. The huge pot that Carl had already assumed was his already.
Carl showed his hand and Inman turned over a Jack-Jack giving him three Jacks. This was not what Carl had wanted to see. There was another card to come and if that card paired anything on the table Inman would make a full house. There were lots of hands that would have had Inman drawing dead but unfortunately this was not one of them.
There were nine cards that would win him the hand, not ten as the 4 of clubs would have made his full house but given Carl a straight flush. Carl would win four out of every five times in this position. The problem was Carl couldn’t afford to lose and continue to play. If he got unlucky and lost a pot of HK$217,000 which is about one million Thai baht, he would have had to leave the game. The altitude was going to put Carl at a disadvantage if he tried to continue with scared money. The air was thin and he was already getting dizzy.
The dealer seemed to take forever to turn up the final card. He looked around the table to make sure everything was in order. It was the biggest pot of the night and he had to make sure he was not at risk of being berated by the loser. He pulled the top card and burnt it, which is what they call throwing it into the muck with the other discarded cards. A tradition going back to the Wild West where cheats often used marked cards. By throwing away the top card the dealer negated the advantage of a player knowing what it was. He then swiped the second card, let it hover for a while and then flipped it face up on the table for all to see. It was the Queen of hearts, which was a safe card for Carl. He had won the pot.
Carl had his head down, arms outstretched, pulling the enormous pile of chips towards him. The table was quiet, unusually silent. Carl looked up and saw him. Inman’s face was white, his lips had become thinner, and his eyes shocked Carl. He had read books that had described a person as having hatred in their eyes. Carl had seen anger before but not such absolute hatred, nothing like this. The ice-cold eyes were projecting total rage. They were the eyes of a devil.
“You got very lucky Carl,” he snarled.
What a voice, like something from somewhere else. The voice didn’t fit the situation. And, fuck. He knew Carl’s real name.
“But that is the last bit of luck you will ever have,” he continued.
Carl kept stacking his chips.
“You will need that money Carl. You will need it to run. Thailand is that way and you want to be going the other way.” He jerked his bony finger up and pointed west. “Try to run very fast and very far away. Life, as you know it is over. Amateurs don’t last long in my jungle.” He stared across the baize card table waiting for a reaction. He didn’t get one. Carl was patiently stacking chips.
“You are beginning to bore me now. I do hope you are leaving,” he said to Carl in a fake upper class British accent.
Then his face returned to normal. He dismissed Carl with his eyes and was done with him. The other people at the table hadn’t understood the depth or the meaning of what he had said. They must have put it down to a temper tantrum resulting from hitting a dream hand of three Jacks and still losing over HK$100,000. Which was sort of what had happened.
The game resumed. He ignored Carl completely. Carl finished putting his chips in plastic racks and carried them to the cashier’s window. He glanced back at the table and caught Inman looking at a nasty-looking Chinese male sitting at the bar. He was wearing a safari suit, had short cropped hair, a very square build, and a general look of mid-rank officialdom. Immediately after Inman had looked at him, he had looked directly at Carl. Carl converted his chips to cash and left the casino.
He directed the taxi to take him back to the street where his hotel was. Carl got out a hundred meters before the hotel and walked on the opposite side of the road to a restaurant directly across from the entrance. He was nervous and the hairs on the back of his neck were dancing the tango. Carl didn’t have long to wait. Within a few minutes a car pulled up outside the hotel and parked illegally. Two men in safari suits got out and walked into the hotel. They were cops. Carl knew what cops looked like.
He expected them to have taken up position inside the lobby waiting for him to walk in. They would be certain he would show up eventually as he had not checked out and his luggage was still in the room. Fortunately his passport was in his jacket jockeying for space with the stacks of cash he had spread between all of his pockets.
In such a situation Carl found it was always essential to establish what adversaries were expecting him to do and then do the total opposite. Carl could live without his luggage so he pulled up the collar of his jacket, left the restaurant and walked, face down, up the street away from the hotel. He would head straight to the sea terminal and pay cash for a ticket on the first boat to Hong Kong. The same boat he had left Macau on all those years before.
Chapter 12
Carl landed in Bangkok late Sunday morning on a Thai Airways flight from Hong Kong.After queuing for the standard visa formalities and an unchecked walk through customs green channel he took a limousine from the airport to the city. The car’s radio was playing North East Thailand’s version of country music. Limousine drivers, just like the taxis, played their music whether they had a passenger or not. The traffic was unusually light and the sun was shining. Carl felt good to be back in Bangkok.
Carl was contemplating spending the next couple of days by the pool when the phone rang. The screen said ‘George’ so he answered the phone immediately.
“You picked up a tail at the airport,” he told Carl.
“What kind of tail?” Carl felt a cold wave go up his spine. This wasn’t the first time he had been followed but Carl had a premonition that this time was different.
“Looks like police to me,” George said clinically.
“What kind of police?”
“Like undercover types. Nasty undercover types! The type of policemen that would stick a knife in your back, then arrest you for carrying a concealed weapon. I’ve got a picture of them on my phone, I’ll send it to you.” He sounded concerned and that bothered Carl.
“Okay I will see if I can lose them.” Carl hung up.
At the early part of the twenty-first century, anonymous plainclothes police units had been executing suspected drug dealers as government policy. Police spokesmen admitted the body count to have been in the thousands. The executions had stopped after a shock
ed world had reacted loudly. There was no doubt that some of the executioners had killed people for their own profit or advancement in the criminal underworld. Many of the executed had not died well as the hit squads had tortured them for information and access to their money prior to dispatching them. The killings had stopped, or at least there was no overt government assassination policy anymore, but Carl knew the execution squads must still have been there, keeping a low profile somewhere in the police force. Carl hoped that the group following him was not from that background.
The phone buzzed and vibrated telling Carl that a message was coming in. He opened the attachment and looked at the picture of two men standing behind him as he queued at the airport desk to book the limo. They both wore safari suits, the Asian thug’s uniform. He didn’t know them and one look told him that he didn’t like them. Carl put the phone in his pocket and told the limousine driver that there was a change of plan and to take him to the Hyatt hotel instead of his home address. Carl promised the driver a nice tip for the extra distance.
The next half hour had Carl feeling stressed. The mind did strange things when fear was thrown into the equation. He wasn’t scared of death as much as the majority of people in the world. His life experiences had provided a certain level of immunity. The problem was being stuck in the car. The adrenalin wouldn’t kick in until he was on the move. Then Carl knew he would stop feeling like throwing up and do what was required. It wasn’t like this was going to be his first dance.
Carl asked the limousine to stop about fifty yards short of the hotel. He tipped the driver, as promised, and got out of the car. Carl walked casually into the lane that led to the car park and entered by the side door of the hotel. Just inside the door he loitered at the dry cleaning counter as if he was there to do his laundry.
Carl observed the car arriving with the two men inside. They would have been harder to lose if they had been on a motorcycle but the car was their only option for an airport job because bikes cannot enter the elevated expressway from the airport to the city. An airport job requires a car. Carl watched one of them jump out of the car and walk towards him while the car drove off to enter the underground car park.