Authors: Harlan Wolff
Carl got out of the taxi at the top of the street. Soi 5 was a narrow one-way street that became a horseshoe with Soi 7 going one way in the other direction and letting the cars get back to Sukhumvit Road. It had a supermarket, small hotels, and lots of bars. The top end of the street was a hangout for African pimps and drug dealers. Shopping at the supermarket was an unusual experience as you were likely to be whispered to by big African men with offers of ecstasy, cocaine, speed or if that was not your bag they would offer to get you a big African prostitute from around the corner. It was known in Bangkok as little Africa and the police looked the other way.
Carl walked along the street and ignored the yells of, “Hey man,” from the groups of African males outside Foodland supermarket. Carl wasn’t buying. He walked on a little way to the bar opposite the pub he was going to meet the colonel at and found a discreet corner where he could observe the comings and goings across the street. Carl trusted the colonel but did not know how good his pursuers were. He wasn’t going in there until he knew the colonel hadn’t been followed.
The colonel arrived promptly at three and he was on foot. He was obviously taking the situation very seriously. Not only had Carl never seen him arrive anywhere on time before but, more importantly, he had never seen him arrive anywhere without his Mercedes. He went into the pub, looked around, and when he couldn’t find Carl he picked a discreet table in the corner and waited. He was in civilian clothes but still had his shiny police boots on. The boots were always the first thing people noticed. Everywhere he went they knew he was a policeman. Maybe that was the point.
Carl watched for the next ten minutes until he was sure the colonel hadn’t been followed. If he had, Carl was confident that he would have seen them. In such a small street there were a limited number of positions they could have used to watch what was happening in the pub, and from where Carl was he could see all of them. Feeling reassured he crossed the street, went inside and sat down at the table.
“So tell me what this is about,” the colonel said almost in a whisper.
Carl told him everything, the whole story. The only part that brought a smile to the colonel’s face was how Carl had gone through old direct mailing lists to confirm Inman’s presence in Thailand under the then known alias. Apart from that his face remained deadly serious throughout.
“You are in trouble this time,” he told Carl. “You no longer have a client and anything you do will be seen as a direct attack by this man and his associates. You will not be a service provider, you will be the enemy.”
“Quite.”
“I did a check on his mobile phone. He has some powerful friends in the police and the army. He makes a lot of calls to General Amnuay.”
General Amnuay was the army’s equivalent of a Godfather. He had a reputation of being involved in most of the profitable rackets. As far as Carl knew, he didn’t have a lot of enemies, not live ones anyway. The situation was getting worse on a daily basis.
“Did you get the picture I sent you? They are the ones that followed me from the airport.”
“They are soldiers. I mean they were soldiers. They are well known to the police by their nicknames Cat and Rat. They are from a group of rogue Special Forces. They are mafia for hire to politicians and big shots. They had promising military careers until they got exposed in an FBI case involving Americans smuggling guns to the Yakusa in Japan. They were the suppliers. The guns were being stolen from upcountry Army bases. They were never prosecuted but were kicked out of the Army instead. Now they make their living as muscle for hire.”
“Did they ever get the boss? The one that would have fronted the money and had the overseas connections?”
“No. The FBI only got the mules. They were low rank US marines. They were the people that hand-carried the guns on US military flights to Japan. Nobody else was ever prosecuted.”
“So if Inman was the man at the top it would explain why he has the friends that he does,” Carl said.
“Let’s assume that what you say is true and not another one of your colourful hypotheses. Your man plays golf with very powerful men and is their link to foreign gangsters overseas. He makes the deals and launders the money. This is not a man that you want as your enemy. This man can be fatal if you get in his way. This is all theory though so we need to focus on what we know to be fact.”
“Point taken,” Carl said reluctantly. “We know I was being followed and am now being searched for by ex-soldiers that kill their enemies.”
“Yes.”
“Any advice?”
“Don’t let them find you.”
He pushed something to Carl under the table. It was a gun. Carl didn’t like guns.
“Keep this. It is untraceable to me. It was confiscated during a case and never got filed as evidence. Try not to get caught carrying it. I know you don’t like guns but if these people find you you’ll be glad you’ve got it.”
Carl took it, pulled his shirt outside his trousers, and tucked the cold metal into the front of his belt. The shirt and his expanding belly would hide it.
“Did you find out anything about the student murders?” Carl asked.
“Not much that the newspapers are not already aware of, like the missing ears they put in every headline. The only thing the papers don’t know yet is that all the murdered girls were active on computer dating sites. Not the ‘will you marry me’ ones, but the students looking to fuck a foreigner for money ones.”
“You mean prostitutes?”
“Certainly not. They were not from poor families.”
The colonel believed that only the rural poor were to be classed as true criminals. Anybody whose family owned anything in Bangkok larger than a shop house was just being clever when they profited from an illegal or immoral act. Clever people and the money they spent played an important part in the local economy.
Internet sex negotiation had become very big. It entailed explicit sexual conversations online with the intention of meeting for immediate sex. This enabled people to have sex with a stranger with less risk of embarrassment as the flirting process had already taken place. It also pre-qualified them as having similar sexual tastes.
As appealing as it occasionally sounded Carl had never tried it. There was a lack of something, romance probably. But more than that, Carl’s awareness of the duality of people killed any possibility of taking strangers at face value. Every time he thought he was being unnecessarily judgmental, something, like dead people in morgues, would prevent him from changing his mind.
“Have they traced the last person any of the victims had been chatting to?”
“Not really. It can be very anonymous. A lot of the men are married so not posting a picture is quite normal. They did some Internet tracing but all they got was public wireless areas in shopping centres. If the killer had a device that he only used for this one purpose then there is no way of linking it back to him. Unless he logged on using it in his own home or place of work, which he didn’t.”
“But they believe that the killer is a foreigner?” Carl asked him.
“Either that or a Thai pretending to be a foreigner.”
“No,” Carl said with total certainty. “This killer is a foreigner.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
“Can you point the investigators in the right direction? Tell them to look into Inman, I mean Somchai Poochokdee? I know he is the killer.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I am going to avoid eating in busy restaurants.”
“Apart from that?”
“I will work on gathering evidence that can later be passed on to the police.”
“It won’t be easy to get a proper investigation into a man that plays golf with the generals.”
“If I prove he is killing teenage girls somebody must be willing to lock him up,” Carl said.
“How can you be so naive?” the colonel asked him angrily.
“That’s always a good question.”
“We’ve been here long enough,” the colonel said as he stood up.
Carl agreed with him and they left the pub separately.
Late afternoon on busy lower Sukhumvit Road was probably not a good place for him to be. Carl cut through the backstreets from Soi 5 to Soi 3, an area that is known as the Arab Quarter as it was the centre for middle-eastern restaurants and cafes offering hubbly-bubbly pipes. He came out at the Nana intersection. An even worse place to be, as it was where the popular Nana bars were, and at that time of day they would be full of foreigners who knew Carl.
A taxi was looking for a fare and Carl quickly slid in the backseat. He needed clothes so he told the taxi to take him to a department store on the other side of the river, Thonburi again. All Carl needed was a Levis outlet, and he would be able to find one at the old department store across the river. It was a long way to go in Bangkok traffic but he had nothing better to do. Carl had decided that he would give up shaving and wear nothing but blue jeans for a while.
Chapter 16
Carl was wearing the clean clothes he had put on at the department store. He dropped the rest of the shopping off at the room. The need for creature comforts had overruled common sense on the return journey and he had made the taxi stop at the Hyatt Hotel so he could buy books, a bottle of Ardbeg single malt, and a box of Cuban cigars. He was starting to feel himself again, to hell with enemies.
On his way out he slipped his man some more money and let him know there was luggage in the room, failing to mention that it was in paper and plastic shopping bags. The attendant didn’t ask any questions or show any interest in what was going on. As long as he remembered to slip him some money every day Carl could have been screwing his way through a circus troupe, animals and all, or running an opium den for all the attendant cared.
By early evening Carl was sitting in one of Bangkok’s famous and trendy bars. He was inconspicuous as his blue jeans and three-day beard were perfect camouflage amongst Bangkok’s middle class drinkers. Brown Sugar was a jazz pub on the street that ran behind Lumpini Park. It had opened in the 1980s when Carl was a relatively young man and its murky and relaxed atmosphere where Thais and foreigners mingled was a novelty in the Bangkok of that time. It suited his mood that night as he craved something familiar. The frontage was mostly glass so Carl had gone straight to a table at the very back where there was the least light.
He had called George from the taxi and given him a cryptic clue to where he was going; the Rolling Stones like it in their coffee. He was confident that George would be able to solve it; he had taken great interest in Carl’s daily battles with the Bangkok Post’s cryptic crossword. George was reliable as always. Carl was only on his third beer when he arrived and sat down opposite him.
“I took the long way here to make sure I wasn’t followed.”
“I figured you would,” Carl told him as he ordered him a beer.
“What is our present status?”
Carl placed a rolled up paper bag on the table in front of him.
“What is it?” George asked without picking it up.
“Spoils of war. Two hundred thousand Hong Kong dollars in cash that I need you to hide for me.”
George wrinkled his brow, looked at the bag, looked at Carl and then slid it onto his lap.
“Do you have a plan or is this bohemian look permanent?” he asked, having taken note of the designer stubble and new wardrobe.
“Floundering a little,” Carl told him. “Seems the colonel doesn’t believe that telling the police our man is a serial killer is a prudent thing to do.”
“Why would he say that?”
“Seems our target may be doing business and playing golf with General Amnuay. Information is that he may be a bit of a handful.”
“Handful? The man is the biggest gangster in town. You have really got yourself in a mess again. How the hell do you plan to get out of this one?”
“That, George, is the question that murders sleep.”
“I see a future with a very long beard if you don’t think of something soon.”
Carl was relieved to see he still had his sense of humour. A sense of humour goes a long way when surrounded by people who want you dead and possess the means.
“I want to pay a late night visit to Inman’s old office building on Phetchburi Road,” Carol told him. “Don’t know where it fits in, but something about it isn’t right. It is a very expensive piece of real estate to leave idle for so many years. Especially when you are in the real estate business. That and the fact that somebody is still paying the electricity bill.”
“What’s on your mind?”
“Do you still pick locks?”
“Sounds like I’ll have to,” he said wearily.
The plan was to go there late. Closing time, when the police were all busy dealing with the drunks. George left to put the money somewhere safe and Carl ordered a plate of food and slowed down his beer consumption. Getting comfortably numb on alcohol was always a temptation when dealing with stress but not a good idea before a burglary. The piped jazz music was pleasant enough but he wasn’t in the mood.
The live music started at nine and the band typically showed up a little before. The band comprised a piano player, double bass, tenor saxophone, and a long-legged black vocalist. She was beautiful. Her name was Jacqueline, and once upon a time she had almost become another Mrs. Engel. When she saw him in the corner she came and sat in the seat George had recently vacated.