The Collected jq-6

by Brett Battles

  It also wasn’t easy to stay.

  Another flip turn.

  Fifty, fifty, fifty.

  Quinn showered, toweled off, and headed over to his locker.

  As he was dressing, his phone vibrated once. He pulled it out and saw that someone had called while he was in the pool. The surprising part was who.

  Liz.

  His relationship with his sister was still a work in progress. There were years of damage yet to be undone, all of which were Quinn’s fault. Things were improving, but, until now, they had not reached the point where she would call him. It was always the other way around. The times when she did want to reach him, it was either via email, text, or she would call Orlando.

  He navigated to his voice mail and pressed the link to her message.

  “Call me as soon as you get this. I don’t know if I’m just overreacting, or there’s a problem, but-” A pause. “Just call me.”

  There was no missing the panic in her voice.

  Quinn hurriedly pulled on the rest of his clothes, and made his way to the exit. As soon as he stepped outside, he called his sister back.

  “Jake?” she said, answering before the first ring was complete.

  “Is everything all right?”

  “I, I don’t know. Um, uh…”

  “Slow down. Take a breath. Tell me what’s going on.”

  “It’s Nate. I think he might be missing.”

  Quinn paused on the sidewalk. “Why do you think that?”

  “I can’t find him.”

  He closed his eyes, and grimaced. Every since it became clear the relationship between Liz and Nate was more than a fling, he’d been worried something like this was going to happen. Nate’s work meant there would be times he wouldn’t be reachable. It was the nature of the job, and Quinn was sure there was no way Liz could fully understand that, and would at some point feel hurt because of it.

  “Liz, it’s probably nothing,” he said. “Sometimes projects take a bit longer than expected, that’s all. I’m sure he’ll call you as soon as he can.”

  “No. You don’t understand. He was supposed to meet me. He didn’t show up.”

  Quinn cocked his head, surprised. “Meet you? Where?”

  “Los Angeles. I flew in a couple hours ago.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “I’m in your house. He’s not here, Jake. I don’t think he’s been here for days.”

  “And you were supposed to meet him?”

  “Yes,” she said, annoyed. “We’ve been planning this for weeks. He’s the one who flew me out. He was supposed to pick me up at the airport, but he wasn’t there. So I came here, and he’s not here, either.”

  Quinn started heading toward Orlando’s again, walking quickly at first, then breaking into a run. “You tried calling him?”

  “Half a dozen times. Straight to voice mail. What’s going on? Where could he be?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t talked to him in a while. Look, Liz, sit tight, okay? It’s probably nothing. Let me see what I can find out, and I’ll call you back.”

  “When?”

  “As soon as I know something.”

  He could hear her breathing rapidly on the other end. “What could have happened? Do you think…do you think…”

  “I don’t think anything,” he said, knowing where her mind must be going. “Just relax, okay? I’ll call you soon. I promise.”

  He thought he heard her say something, but it was low and unintelligible, then she hung up.

  Without breaking stride, he called Orlando.

  “Hey,” she said. “You all-”

  “I just talked Liz.”

  Orlando’s light tone disappeared. “What’s going on?”

  “She was supposed to meet Nate in Los Angeles today.”

  “Yeah, I know. She emailed me a couple days ago. Said they might come up here next week.”

  She had failed to share that information with Quinn, but that wasn’t surprising. “He didn’t show up.”

  “What?”

  “He didn’t meet her at the airport and he’s not at home, either. She thinks he’s missing.”

  “He’s probably just stuck on a job.”

  “Probably, but…”

  They were both silent for a moment before Orlando said, “But he would have at least let her know.”

  “Yeah. Listen, I’ll be there in a few minutes, but can you-”

  “Make some calls? Not while I’m talking to you.”

  The line went dead.

  Quinn sprinted the rest of theway back to Orlando’s place, and yanked open the front door. Mrs. Vu was standing at the entrance table, sorting the mail. She whirled around, gasping in shock as he entered.

  “Sorry,” Quinn said. “Where is she?”

  The old Vietnamese woman hesitated only a moment before pointing up the stairs. “In office.” As Quinn started across the foyer, she pointed at his feet. “Shoes. Shoes.”

  He ignored her, and ran to the stairs.

  “Shoes!” she called after him.

  He paused halfway up, just long enough to pull each shoe off, then continued to the second floor. Behind him he could hear Mrs. Vu scoff. She and her husband took care of the house and helped with Garrett. Undoubtedly, she was already heading for the vacuum, and would have the stairs spotless in a matter of minutes.

  Orlando’s office was located at the front of the house. Quinn skirted around the top of the banister, and raced over to the open door. She was sitting at her desk, her phone to her ear. Looking up, she raised a finger, telling him to hold on.

  “Uh-huh…Yeah, I understand…Thanks. I appreciate it.” She hung up, and said to Quinn, “Isaac Parker.”

  Parker was a middleman, a job broker who put together projects for clients who wanted to maintain distance from the actual work.

  “And?”

  “Nate’s not working for him.”

  “Have you reached anyone else?”

  “Two others. Simmons and Van Dorn. Was going to try Tan-” She paused. “What am I thinking? Daeng.”

  “What about Daeng?” Quinn asked.

  “Nate’s been using him a lot lately.”

  “He has? How do you know that?”

  “Someone had to keep an eye on things here when you were doing your soul searching.”

  “You were there with me.”

  “Yeah,” she said, lifting the corner of her laptop. “And there’s this little thing called the Internet. Perhaps you’re familiar with it.”

  He tried to keep from glaring at her as he pulled out his cell and selected Daeng’s number.

  Three rings, then a sleepy, “Hello?”

  “Daeng? It’s Quinn.”

  “Kind of early to be calling, don’t you think?”

  Quinn glanced at his watch. It was four-twenty in the afternoon. “Depends on where you are.”

  “Everything depends on where you are.” Daeng let out a long yawn. “It’s all right. I needed to get up anyway.”

  “Are you back in Bangkok?”

  “Yeah.”

  Quinn did a quick time calculation. It would be six twenty a.m. there. “Nate wouldn’t happen to be with you, would he?”

  “Nate? No. Why would he be here?”

  “Haven’t you two been working together?”

  “Yeah, but I had to come home to deal with something.”

  “So you’re not helping him on a job right now.”

  “No, I’m not. What’s going on?”

  Quinn filled him in. “It’s only been a few hours, so it’s possible he’s just tied up, but it’s not like him to let Liz arrive without getting word to her that he wouldn’t be there.”

  Daeng was silent.

  “Are you still there?” Quinn asked.

  “Yeah. I was just thinking.”

  When Daeng didn’t continue, Quinn said, “Thinking what?”

  Daeng hesitated, then said, “Not important.”

  Quinn let the silence
hang for a moment. “When did you leave L.A.?”

  “Five days ago.”

  “Do you know if he was going to be working on a job while you were gone?”

  “Yeah. He had something lined up.”

  “Who hired him?”

  “He didn’t tell me. The gig came in after I booked my flight, so he knew I wouldn’t be helping him.”

  Which meant Nate’s ethics would keep him from sharing the information, a habit Quinn himself had drilled into his former apprentice.

  “Any idea who he got to replace you?”

  “He was making some calls, but not having any luck at the time. He did say the broker offered to set him up with someone if he couldn’t find anyone.”

  “He said a broker? Not a client direct hire.”

  “He said broker.”

  “Okay, that’s something. Can you think of anything else?”

  Daeng said nothing for several seconds. “No. That’s it as far as I can remember.”

  “Thanks. If you do come up with something, call me,” Quinn said. “Doesn’t matter what time.”

  “I will.”

  Quinn hung up, and looked at Orlando. “Not Daeng. But Nate did have a job set up through a broker. That’ll narrow things a bit.”

  She nodded without looking up from her laptop. After a moment, the printer whirled to life and spit out two sheets of paper. Once it was done, she closed her computer and stood up.

  “All right, we’d better hurry,” she said.

  She handed him one of the printed pieces of paper. As often happened, they were on the same wavelength again.

  In his hand was one of two tickets for a flight to Los Angeles.

  CHAPTER 7

  Bangkok, Thailand

  What Daeng hadn’t told Quinn was that the thing he’d come home to deal with turned out to be nothing. The message he’d received from Ton a week earlier had concerned a Burmese refugee kid, one Daeng had personally helped get onto the right path. According to the note, the boy had been arrested by the Bangkok police for drug trafficking, an offense punishable by death.

  When Daeng couldn’t get ahold of Ton right away to get more details, he had caught a flight home the next day, knowing the arrest had to be some kind of mistake because there was no way the kid would get mixed up in something like that. And he was right. Only it wasn’t the police who’d made the mistake, it was Ton. The kid was not in jail and had no idea what Daeng was talking about when Daeng tracked him down.

  Relieved but frustrated, Daeng had called Ton to try to figure out where the miscommunication had occurred, but Ton was still not answering his phone. Daeng had then checked around and learned that the man had gone northeast to Issan to visit family. That didn’t explain why he wasn’t answering his mobile, though. As a member of Daeng’s loose organization of misfits, Ton was expected to have his phone on him at all times. Not about to travel out to the countryside himself, Daeng wasn’t going to do much about it until Ton called him back.

  Over the following few days, Daeng had become so preoccupied with checking in on his network of people and businesses, and making sure everything was still running smoothly, that he’d shoved all thoughts about Ton to the far reaches of his mind. He knew they’d get things cleared up soon enough.

  Maybe that had been a mistake.

  He headed into the bathroom with his mobile phone, turned on the speaker function, and tried Ton once more. As the line began to ring, he applied shaving cream to his face. Receiving no response, he punched DISCONNECT, finished his shave, and jumped in the shower.

  In less than five minutes, he was dressed and making another call as he walked through the house.

  This time the line was answered with a grunt.

  “Yai, wake up,” Daeng said.

  Another grunt.

  “Come on. I need you.”

  “Who is this?” Yai asked, his voice a slur.

  “Who do you think it is?”

  There was a rustle on the other end. “Daeng? Sorry. It’s kind of early, you know?”

  “Yeah, and I’m already up and dressed.”

  “Oh…um…what’s going on?”

  “When was the last time you talked to Ton?”

  “Ton?” Yai seemed confused for a moment. “Little Ton? Or Big Ton?”

  “Little.”

  “Uh, I don’t know.” Yai paused for a moment. “Well, he did tell me he was going away.”

  “When was this?

  “If you hold on, I can check the time on his text.”

  “Wait, he told you by text? Not on the phone or in person?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When was the last time you actually talked to him?”

  Another few seconds of silence. “Maybe a week ago. It was a Friday, I think.”

  “Did he say anything about visiting his family then?”

  “No. Not that I remember. Why?”

  “Have you tried calling him since?”

  Daeng could almost hear Yai shake his head. “I didn’t have any reason to.”

  “What about a number for his family in Issan? Do you have one?”

  “He should have his mobile. Just call that.”

  “I have called his mobile. He’s not answering. But I need to talk to him now.”

  “Okay, okay. Um, let me think.” Yai fell silent for several seconds. “Dom might know. She’s been hanging out with him on and off for a while now.”

  “Get ahold of her. Tell her to call me.”

  “Sure, of course.” A pause. “You want me to do that now?”

  “Yes,” Daeng said. “Now.”

  While he waited for the girl to call him, he cut up a mango, and started to eat it. Two slices in, his phone rang, only it wasn’t Dom. It was Yai again.

  “She’s not answering,” Yai said.

  “You tried more than once?”

  “Yeah. Three times. Maybe she sleeps deeper than I do.”

  Maybe, Daeng thought. Then again…

  “You know where Ton lives, right?” he asked.

  “Sure,” Yai said.

  “Meet me there in twenty minutes.”

  “It’s going to take me a little more than-”

  Daeng hung up.

  Ton lived in the rooftop apartment of a building near Silom. Yai was waiting out front when Daeng’s taxi pulled to the curb.

  “You go up yet?” Daeng asked.

  Yai shook his head. “Just got here.”

  “Come on, then.”

  They went inside and took the scuffed-up elevator to the seventh floor. From there, they had to climb the stairs one more flight to Ton’s place-a four-room structure built right in the middle of the roof. It had a wide wooden patio at the front, and a jumbled storage area behind.

  A plank pathway led from the stairwell door along the edge of the roof to the home’s side entrance. Daeng knocked when they reached it, but, as he expected, no one answered.

  He tried the knob and was surprised to find the door was unlocked. He glanced back at Yai, who also looked confused.

  “You armed?” Daeng whispered.

  Yai reached around to the small of his back, and pulled a gun out from under his shirt.

  Daeng’s intention had been merely to find a way inside, where he was sure they’d find some way of contacting Ton’s family in Issan, but as he opened the door, he instantly knew a call to the countryside would be unnecessary.

  The smell of death rushed through the opening as if it had been waiting for someone to let it loose.

  “Shit!” Yai said, blinking his eyes and twisting his head away.

  Daeng looked around, and spotted several old rags by the back corner of the house. They were dirty, but better than nothing. He retrieved them, gave a couple to Yai, bundled together the two he’d kept, and pressed them tightly over his nose and mouth.

  Yai looked surprised. “We’re going in?”

  Daeng answered by doing just that.

  They found Ton and Dom in the living roo
m, sitting side by side on the couch, their throats slit. A swarm of flies hovered around their bloated corpses like auras. Their eyeballs and tongues seemed to be trying to jump out of their head.

  Yai groaned twice before rushing out of the room.

  Daeng could hear him just outside the front door losing whatever was left in his stomach from the previous night. Daeng didn’t have the same problem. Even before he’d started working with Nate removing all sorts of bodies, he’d seen more than his share of the dead. Instead of running out, he moved closer, looking for any clues as to who had done this and why.

  But whoever slashed Ton’s and Dom’s necks had left no calling card.

  “This is very disturbing,” Christina said.

  Daeng remained silent, letting the woman process what he had told her.

  They were in a storage room at the back of a restaurant Christina owned near Khao San Road, just one of dozens of businesses the American woman had around the city. She’d been in the Thai capital for decades and was known in certain, very exclusive circles as someone who got things done. She and Daeng had used each other’s services many times over the years, and she had always exhibited a level of protectiveness over him, not quite as if he were the son she never had, but close.

  “And you’re sure about how long they’ve been there like that?” she asked.

  “As sure as I can be,” he told her. Given the condition of the bodies, Daeng was certain Ton and Dom had been dead for at least a week, which would have been right around the same time Ton had sent Daeng the message to return to Bangkok. Perhaps even before.

  She stared at an empty shelf, the hint of concern on her face. Without turning back to him, she said, “Someone was asking about you.”

  “What? Who?”

  “I didn’t talk to them directly. They spoke to one of my people, who then put them in contact with your organization.”

  “With Ton?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

  She hesitated, then nodded.

  “When?”

  “Thursday last week.”

  A day prior to the message Ton had sent Daeng.

  “Who was it?”

  “Like I said, I didn’t speak to them, so I don’t have a name.”

  “But you can call whoever it was they talked to and find out.”