Bangkok Express (Joe Dylan Crime Noir, #1)

by James Newman

  “Boss, you don’t want to drink that. Trust me.”

  “Why not?” he smelled it again.

  “You’ve had enough already,’ Hale put his finger and thumb on the vessel. “Let go.”

  “No.”

  “Boss, I’m going to count to three. Once I reach the number three you are going to release your grip. Do you understand?”

  “Oh, have your rotten shooter!” Boss said defeated.

  “Thanks.”

  “Nobody wants to have fun anymore.”

  “It’s the way of the world, Boss.”

  Hale returned to the exit and gave Pim’s vessel to the police. They took it over to a make-shift lab set up on a table outside in the parking lot. The sample was clean. Hale was free to go. He felt a weight lift from his shoulders as he walked out into the parking-lot to a line of men on motorcycles wearing orange vests.

  The quickest and most dangerous way to The Red Zone was by motorbike taxi. At night the traffic was manageable. Hale sat on the back of a motorcycle taxi and gave the rider directions. The rider sped between vehicles, weaved around danger with enough speed to keep his line, no hesitation, no mistakes, no fear. Hale trusted the rider. He knew which way the river flowed. They sped through a channel between a public bus and a Japanese pick-up. Both knew the gap existed to be exploited. All gaps did. Hale held onto the back of the seat and watched the rivers rush by; fruit markets, clothing stalls, jewellery stores, fortune-tellers, road-side bars and restaurants. The night hung over the city like an oily canvas. They arrived at The Red Zone. Hale paid the rider tipping him heavily. The rider had earned it, he was direct and honest. It was these small victories that kept Hale smiling.

  The smell of burnt chillies and fried vegetables, stale beer, cigarette smoke, cheap whore-perfume, raw sewage, barbequed meat, incense, massage oils, sliced durian, exhaust fumes.

  Past flashes of neon faces both beautiful and hideous, lights, thousands of lights, different colours, beautiful freaks, tourists, prostitutes, beggars, millionaires. All cats were grey at night. The caterpillar man dragged his awkward burden along the road using his stumps to propel him forward. An alms bowl held in his teeth. The whores touched cripples for luck, but Hale didn’t believe in legends and cripples and luck. Ghanaian pimps chewed gum, smacked their lips together, hissed through broken teeth. They wore baseball caps back–to-front and gold sovereigns on heavy fingers. Their women walked up and down the zone in twos and threes calling out “hey papa” and “watcha doing?”

  He walked through a curtain into the Magic Table Bar. Booths, a stage, women standing on tables and dancing around chromed steel. Smoke and mirrors. Hale sat and drank Jack Daniels, bought lady-drinks, watched dances, enjoyed a short-time with a white-skinned Vietnamese. Movie-star eyes and the kind of body that dug graves. She was old enough to have put at least five lost-souls through the Bangkok meat-grinder and he didn’t want to make it number six. He made his excuse. His heart wasn’t in it; Vietnam could wait.

  Goodnight Hanoi.

  Hale was thinking about calling it a night when he felt the hand fall and grip his shoulder. The hand belonged to a man much bigger than any local he had ever met. Bigger than any man he had ever met. Must be a foreigner, Hale thought. One that means business. The fingers squeezed his shoulder like a rubber ball. The hand spoke.

  “You messed up, Jimmy.”

  It was late September. The city was flooded. Nobody called him Jimmy. Who would be out looking for him? Who would be out in the filthy waters, the blocked drains? Who would be wading through the overflowed canals? Weaving in between the hookers and the Johns in the pissing-down rain, past the super-rats and the cockroaches; cholera, dysentery, lust, HIV? Who would swim through the city’s murky waters to find him on a monsoon night?

  Hale remembered a card game. A ceiling fan, an opium pipe. He had lost a lump. Bailed out by a shark called The Shark. The repayment terms were hazy. It was coming back slowly like an awful jigsaw puzzle.

  The Shark.

  “Come on, Jimmy, time to pay.”

  James Hale knew that the hand wouldn’t pop him in the open. Anyone killing an expat in public was looking at a long stretch in the Bangkok Hilton. Killing westerners was bad for tourism. It was a warning. The voice was Australian or Kiwi. He spoke again: “You messed up real bad.” Hale felt his stomach clench as his balls rose up a notch. The Shark. Fear came in the strangest places. A bar in The Red Zone, neon lights, girls. He had heard the voice before. The hand loosened its grip. Hale turned his head slowly. He moved his body around the bar stool. The man was a mountain of heavily tattooed muscle. He had money. He loaned the money and took it back with interest. He had creative repayment plans. He was The Shark.

  “Look, Shark, I’m going to get you your money, alright. I just need a little more time.”

  “Mate, it wasn’t me that got in deep with the Chinese boys. You played the games, you lost the money. Now I like to help out the expats where I can. Jimmy, it’s time to pay.” The tattooed man said. His grip on Hale’s shoulder tightened. He felt something crack. The hand let go.

  “Forty-eight hours,” Hale said.

  The man-mountain didn’t say a word. He made a sound. Something between a growl and a sigh. He turned and walked through the barroom door. Hale finished his drink. Paid his bill and then walked out onto the street. Rain in large puddles. The dark oily water reflecting the blurry neon lights from the city. Where could he find a hundred grand?

  FIVE

  Turtle Island

  More guava deliveries

  KHUN SHOGUN was a short man with a large paunch held tight by a golf shirt, a pair of chinos, and polished brogues. His dark brown eyes closed in on whatever fell before them with a shark-like curiosity. Everything and everyone had a price tag, either too expensive or too cheap. If you got close enough to Shogun you could smell the money. People didn’t tend to get that close. They weren’t that worthy.

  The beach beer-bar did steady business. Location was everything. The bar only needed one person in every hundred to stop and buy a drink. He had another hundred bars just like it to take care of the rest of the white coconuts. It was just a tiny fraction of the empire. He liked to visit each one to let the workers know he was still around to keep them on their toes. There was a little blue book on the bar counter. He picked it up and saw it was written by a man called Peter. It was about a Thai boy who played chequers. Somebody had scrawled something in blue ink on the title page. It was a proverb. Like the Chinese proverbs, these sayings were used in everyday situations:

  Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today.

  It made sense. Shogun stood up from the stool and smiled at Nat. She ran the bar at a profit and serviced customers with the vague hope of finding one charitable and foolish enough to make the long-term financial commitment. She was thirty-seven and wore her hair in braids. She hailed from the North East and knew the interior of every hotel room on the island. Some women became nurses, some became lawyers, and some became loyal wives and mothers. Some never became anything until they landed in the bar and became confidence tricksters using their tits and their lips as the bait. They became a nest of disappointments, a family up north and a sneaky shot of rice whiskey when the punters were looking the other way. They became a game of cards and a gold bracelet. When they died they were reborn back into the bar. The supply was solid and inexhaustible.

  Dust and dirt carpeted the road. The sun beat down on his neck. He took out the key from his pocket and unlocked his Toyota pick-up. The air conditioning blasted the cabin with an icy coolness as he listened to the engine tick over. He drove along the circular beach road that snaked around the island and then rose up to Coral Cove. Past the houses and bungalows that he owned either side of the road. Up in the mountains the road steepened with mature coconut groves to one side and limestone boulders the other. He reached the gates that separated his kingdom from the rest of the island. The gateman pushed a button on the control panel inside
his cabin and the wrought- iron gates mechanically opened. The road wound lazily up towards his mansion that stood at the highest point on a gentle slope overlooking the island. Shogun parked the pick-up, stepped out, and walked twenty yards to the front door. He entered the building with a key. The first level was made of block painted brilliant white and divided into eight large rooms. The upper level was teak with five bedrooms and a vast balcony with views across the palm-studded mountains to the south and the lazy curve of the cove to the west. He had a full-time staff of cooks, cleaners, gardeners, hostesses, animal- keepers and fortune tellers. There were four guards and a butler. There was a safe that held his fortune. He paid some of his staff to pour drinks and others to offer companionship for overnight guests.

  Shogun walked into his vast main room and smiled at Nok his ten year old hornbill perched inside her gilded cage. Nok has been with Shogun since she was a chick. He had paid a handsome sum from a dealer in Bangkok to bring her to him. Nok was a sign of good luck and fortune. In the grounds Shogun had a small holding of exotic animals, gibbons, slow loris, several rare civets and a fishing cat kitten. None of these animals shared the same place in his heart as Nok did. Hornbills paired for life. Humans never truly paired. He had never met a woman that had filled him with as much joy as Nok. Gantira was decoration and nothing more. A woman’s love was fleeting and unreal to a man with money. They could never meet on equal terms.

  Gantira was sprawled across a chaise sofa reading a book; beads of sweat on her nose despite the air-conditioning. Her skirt was hitched up. Her legs hadn’t been wrapped around his waist for a long time. He watched her slender figure sit up and saunter around the room. It was good for his image to have the most beautiful girl on the island.

  Gantira stopped mid-page. A door the other side of the room opened. Shogun tightened his hands into fists as he saw Franco enter the room. He looked at him as if he were an unfortunate victim inside a car wreck. “This is a surprise.”

  “I’m sorry...”

  Shogun scratched the crown of his head, “Why do you return now? What have you been doing here?”

  “Interesting bird,” Franco said. He walked towards the bird in its cage and placed a finger on the gilded bars. The creature flinched backwards and called in alarm. Franco turned around and faced Shogun directly. “I had to visit. I have a problem. I am thinking that you can be helping me. I am scared, Shogun. I would not ask but, you know... I hope I’m not intruding,” The Italian smiled and the powerful Thai man mirrored the smile sarcastically and spoke slowly as if addressing a small backward child.

  “There is a saying that the west use. Treat others how you wish to be treated yourself. Would it be polite of me to travel to your quiet bungalow and spend a few intimate moments with your precious girlfriend? Do you have a girlfriend? Do you like my woman?” Shogun looked at his wife and then looked at Franco. The Italian could not hold his gaze without flinching.

  “It is not what it seems,” the Italian said holding up his hands.

  “It never is. Go on,” Shogun said. His thoughts focussed on the reclining Buddha. A statue he had seen as a young man in the Ancient Palace. The feet encrusted with mother of pearl. How many hours had he sat staring at The Buddha’s feet wondering if it was a metaphor beyond his grasp? The glimmer of hope on dirty feet? The wise beggar? The wealth of poverty?

  “I need more cash,” Franco said. His words brought Shogun back to the room in the mansion. “I will have to ask my family to lie. Pretend that I am dead. It is no good for me. Alexandra. It was not my fault. You...”

  “I see. Sit,” Shogun motioned towards the sofa. The Italian slumped into the seat. Shogun could see it all very clearly. The answer had presented itself. “Why should we pretend? Let us celebrate your funeral in style.” Shogun walked over to a drinks cabinet and opened an ice box and placed two chunks of ice in a glass. Sometimes the beggar did have feet of diamond. Fortune hid in strange places. He looked directly at Franco sitting opposite him behind the table. The hardwood table with a marble chess set on it. He often played chess with his wife. He never played with business associates.

  To win or to loss would be foolish.

  “Funeral?” Franco said.

  “It is how do you say, finale? You have come here offering yourself. As my dear wife often likes to say; ‘it’s your fate and my destiny,’” Shogun took a bottle of single malt from the cabinet. He poured golden sunburst into the glass.

  “But I am helping you?”

  “Exactly, yes. That is correct. You will be helping me. You are giving everything for me. I am grateful.”

  “Un bastardo, un figlio di puttano.”

  “What did he say?” Shogun shot a glance at Gantira.

  “He’s Italian, they have hot blood. Let him return to his own country and we can all forget this.”

  “But, he swore at me. And you?” He turned to his wife again. “What do you know about Italians?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing.” Shogun laughed. “Niente.” He glanced out of the window and watched the distant flight of a passenger aeroplane approaching the island. “More guava deliveries,” he said to himself. “The island is being continually fertilised.”

  “Please...” Franco said. “I don’t understand.” His good looks were pitiful. He had reached the end of a long race. He was not the winner. “Where do we stand?”

  “A drink.” Shogun busied himself at the cabinet and mixed the whiskey for his guest. He opened the cabinet drawer, picked up and then slipped the Glock into his trouser pocket. He closed the cabinet drawer, turned around and walked back over to where Franco was sitting. He passed him the drink with a smile.

  “Pezzo di merda,” Franco said. Shogun smiled again.

  “Tell me? Was she good?”

  “I came here and she let me in...”

  “There are many things that upset me. My wife letting them in is one of them. Was she vocal? Did she wrap her long legs around you and grip you?”

  “No, it was not like that.”

  “So she was on top, she rode you?”

  “No...”

  “Listen, Franco. I plan to kill you. It is really quite selfish of me, I know. But there is a reason, you see, just after I kill somebody there is a sudden feeling of freedom, Franco. A sense of rebirth, a new beginning. Another soul has been reborn into the endless wheel of becoming. I light a candle and feel at ease with the world, but it is really nothing, the cycle of life and death continues. We are only spectators in the wheel of fortune. Life is overrated don’t you agree?”

  “I promise it was...”

  Shogun reached into his pocket and with one swift jerk of the arm he raised the gun and pointed it at Franco. Shogun knew about fear. It comes to a man as a long lost friend. Shogun’s finger tensed on the trigger.

  He fired as the Italian tried to stand.

  The blast filled the room. Franco fell back into the chair like he had been slapped on the chest. Shogun looked around the room. A table. Chess board. Black and white pieces lined up ready for battle. Franco placed a finger on the entry wound and then looked at its red tip. Gantira stood looking at her husband and the gun in his hand. He looked at her and then the gun. He smiled.

  “Why?” She said.

  “Why?” Shogun walked over to the Italian and fired two more shots into his chest. He then walked back to the cabinet and replaced the gun in the drawer. “Because dead people are less dangerous than live ones. You didn’t see this, Gantira, do you understand?”

  “I saw nothing,” She said.

  “You will not betray me again,” He looked directly at her. “Unless you wish to join him.”

  SIX

  London

  A voyeur of the mundane

  JOE DYLAN walked past the wine bars, coffee shops and boutique gift-shops that sold over-priced gifts to over-paid workers. The workers wore business suits and neckties and held leather slip-cases. They darted in all directions. He headed towards the Lloyds bui
lding. He remembered the days when he was one of the members of the firm. He envied them. The suit and tie brigade. They had their job security, their homes in the country and their golf on a Saturday. They had Swedish au pairs and golden retrievers; they had friends over for pasta, four o-clock tea, cheeseboards and picnic baskets. They had it all. The trouble was they didn’t seem to enjoy it.

  Before he was arrested that day he could have been part of the red setter and wax jacket brigade. The house on the hill was on the horizon. He remembered the days when an honest day’s work paid the bills. He was still at the fringes of the club, doing the dirty work. He was a voyeur of the mundane and safe life that could have been his before the arrest had spun his world upside-down. He remembered the day that the officers came into his building and pulled him out of his chair, “Step outside, sir”. The handcuffs cut into his wrists, the shocked faces of his colleagues. He still heard the sniggers of contempt and the laughter behind closed doors. Paranoia for Joe was a matter of having most of the facts most of the time in most of the right places. It was natural to feel uneasy – he had earned it.

  Joe showed his silver pass to the doorman and walked through the revolving doors into a room the length and width of a football-pitch and higher than a cathedral. He weaved past hundreds of nervous underwriters and cash-hungry brokers. Risks were sold and claims were negotiated. It was a large betting shop. The Brokers took ten-per-cent of the premiums for the risk and the underwriters held their breath. Like all gambling houses, the odds were in favour of Lloyds, but The House didn’t always win.

  Mr Wolfe of Wordsworth sat at one of the small desks that were known due to their shape and size as boxes. Joe introduced himself. “We spoke on the telephone, sir.”

  Wolfe stood up. Joe shook hands with the underwriter and then sat down opposite him at the box. “Thank you for coming Mr. Dylan,” Wolfe was anything but wolfish, a frail little man who Joe surmised to be well beyond regular retirement age. He was bald and wore glasses with thick lenses, his eyes blinked repeatedly like a mole surfacing from a hole. His voice belonged to a younger, stronger man than the one sat in the chair.