World of Trouble (9786167611136) (12 page)

“Business very bad,” Mr. Tang said, glancing
up. “Very bad.”

“Then maybe I should ask for a discount.”

Mr. Tang gave Shepherd a hard look, then
quickly dismissed the comment as a joke, a poor one from his point
of view, and went back to studying his computer screen.

“I’m serious,” Shepherd said.

Mr. Tang didn’t even bother to look up again,
not believing for a moment such a thing was possible.

“Your friends tired of waiting and go,” he
said instead, his eyes still on the screen.

“What friends?”

“Your friends,” Mr. Tang repeated. “They come
about ten, wait a while, but you no come back. So they leave.”

“What are you talking about, Mr. Tang?”

“Said you give them key so they wait in
room.” Mr. Tang gave Shepherd a hard look. “Don’t do that no more.
Don’t give nobody key to my rooms.”

Shepherd was accustomed to conversations with
Mr. Tang being uninformative, but this time he understood exactly
what the old guy was trying to say and he didn’t like the sound of
it one bit. He headed straight for the steps and took them two at a
time.

Shepherd half expected to find the door to
his room hanging off its hinges or something equally dramatic, but
the door looked just like it always did. It was closed and still
firmly attached to the wall. Gingerly, he tried the knob. Locked.
Just as he had left it.

Could he have misunderstood Mr. Tang? It
certainly wouldn’t be the first time.

He took out his key, fitted it into the
handle, and turned. Released from its bolt, the door gently drifted
open of its own weight. He stepped inside.

No, he hadn’t misunderstood Mr. Tang.

His room had been tossed, although it looked
like no real damage had been done in the process. The stuffing
wasn’t torn out of the sofa, the lamps weren’t smashed on the
floor, and the mattress hadn’t been ripped open. Still, somebody
had searched the room, somebody who either wanted him to know it,
or at the very least, didn’t mind. The sofa and chair cushions were
piled on the floor, the television set was turned sideways on its
table, and one of the drawers in the desk had been left standing
open. Some of the mess was probably his own fault, he hadn’t
exactly tidied up before he left for breakfast, but then again he
hadn’t taken all his socks and underwear out of the dresser drawers
and dumped them on the floor either.

He stepped into the bathroom. His shaving bag
was upside down on the floor and a bottle of Tylenol had been
dumped out in the sink.

He closed the toilet lid and sat down on it
to think. Had he been hit by burglars while he was out having
breakfast? Who was he kidding? He knew the answer to that one
without wasting time thinking about it. Nobody robs hotel rooms at
ten in the morning. Too big a chance at that hour the occupant is
either still there or could suddenly return.

The sound of soft footfalls from the living
room cut short Shepherd’s reverie and he looked around quickly for
a weapon of some sort. He remembered reading once about an assassin
using a toothbrush to dispatch his target, but he wasn’t quite sure
of the precise technique required and it was probably too late to
work it out right then. He was contemplating the toilet brush as a
possible alternative when Mr. Tang’s head popped into the
bathroom.

“What they do?” he asked.

“Don’t sneak up on people like that, Mr.
Tang,” Shepherd snapped. “It could get you in real trouble some
day.”

“They search room, huh?”

Shepherd waved his hands and Mr. Tang backed
out of the doorway and released Shepherd from the bathroom.

“They really mess up room,” Mr. Tang said,
looking around.

Shepherd didn’t have the heart to tell him
that some of the mess was exactly the way he had left it.

“How many men did you see, Mr. Tang?”

“Three,” he answered immediately and nodded
his head vigorously. “Or four.”

“So was it three, or four?”

“Yes,” Mr. Tang said. “Maybe.”

Shepherd knew Mr. Tang well enough to see
that line of inquiry had already hit a dead end so he tried a
different tack.

“Were they foreigners?”

“Not think foreigners,” Mr. Tang shook his
head. “Spoke Thai, look Thai. I think all Thai.”

That was interesting, although of course it
didn’t prove anything. Maybe representatives of Charlie’s
opposition had come calling, but then again Thais could be rented
relatively cheaply for all sorts of heavy lifting and anybody could
have hired a few mugs to toss his room. Knowing his visitors were
Thai didn’t help him to figure out what they wanted or, more
importantly, who sent them.

“Did you give them a key?”

“You not listen to me?” Mr. Tang barked
indignantly. “They say they have key so they come upstairs. I tell
you not give anybody key to room.”

Then Mr. Tang put Shepherd’s question
together with his answer and a cautious note crept into his
voice.

“You not give them key?” he asked.

Shepherd shook his head.

Mr. Tang made a hissing noise as he drew air
in between his clinched teeth.

“How long were they here?” Shepherd
asked.

“Not long. Half hour maybe. They come down
and say they not wait any longer. Then leave.”

“Were they carrying anything?”

Mr. Tang’s brow wrinkled in puzzlement.

“Did you see them take anything with them?”
Shepherd clarified. “When they left.”

“No,” Mr. Tang shook his head firmly. “Not
see anything.”

Shepherd nodded. He began ushering Mr. Tang
toward the door while he continued to look the room over for any
suggestion as to what his callers had been searching for.

“You gonna call police?” Mr. Tang asked.

Shepherd hadn’t thought about that yet, but
now that the subject had come up, it didn’t seem to him to be a
very good idea. The kind of Thai cops who would answer a call about
a break in at a foreigner’s hotel room were more likely to be
looking for a contribution to their personal benevolent fund than
to have any genuine interest in locating the culprits. Besides, he
was already getting more attention than he wanted and calling the
cops to report a break-in could go nowhere good.

“No need, huh?” Mr. Tang nudged. “No problem.
No police. Police bad for business and business bad now.”

“Okay,” Shepherd said. “No police.”

“No police.” Mr. Tang actually rubbed his
palms together in delight. “I get maid.”

Shepherd shook his head.

“No, I’ll take care of it,” I said. “No
maid.”

Mr. Tang looked doubtful.

“Thank you for coming up, Mr. Tang, but
everything is fine. I’m going to straighten up and I’ll see to it
that everything is put back exactly like it was. No problem. No
police. No maid.”

“Yes. No problem. No police. No maid.”

Mr. Tang was still nodding as Shepherd closed
the door on him.

He put the cushions back on the couch and sat
down, but he didn’t bother to look around to see if anything was
stolen. It hadn’t been. There wasn’t anything in that room worth
stealing. No money, no jewelry, not even a laptop since he had
decided he didn’t feel like carrying one around this trip and had
left it back home in Hong Kong. His passport, wallet, and telephone
were all in his trouser pockets.

Even if there
had
been something worth
stealing in the room, Shepherd would have bet it would still be
there. Boosting a few odd items clearly wasn’t why his visitors had
come to call.

He looked at the envelope Adnan had given
him, the one with Charlie’s Thai banking records in it. He had put
both it and his phone on the desk when he came through the door and
now both were sitting there looking profoundly conspicuous.

The more Shepherd thought about it, the more
it seemed obvious that his visitors had been looking for what was
in that envelope, or something very much like it. Something that
would tell them what he was doing in Bangkok and how it might be
connected to Charlie Kitnarok. They were looking for Shepherd’s
notes and files, or at least a calendar or an address book, but
they had found none of those things. The only documents he had with
him were in that brown envelope, and his calendar and address book
were on his cell phone.

Shepherd got up and turned the television set
back around, then he closed the desk drawers and started picking
stuff up off the floor. Not that he was much of a housekeeper, but
there was something about knowing that somebody’s hands had been
pawing through his underwear and socks that gave him the creeps.
Better to clean up the place a little so he wouldn’t have to think
about it. Putting things back where they had been wouldn’t change
anything, of course. What had happened had happened. But something
about the process made him feel better anyway. At the very least,
his hands now were the last to have touched his things, not some
rented thug’s.

Regardless of how much better it might make
him feel, Shepherd didn’t intend to waste a whole lot of time
cleaning up his room. He needed to get moving. Because the sooner
he got Charlie’s money moving, too, the sooner he could get the
hell out of Thailand and go home to Hong Kong.

And right now, going home to anywhere sounded
pretty good to him.

IT WASN’T A very long walk from the Grand to the head
office of Bangkok Bank up on Silom Road. Shepherd covered the
distance in fifteen minutes, the envelope with his notes for the
wire instructions and the documents Adnan had given him tucked
safely under his arm.

Ten minutes more and he was sitting in a
visitor’s chair staring across a cluttered desk at a
nervous-looking man who said he was Tanit Chaiya. Shepherd figured
there was a reasonable chance the man actually
was
Tanit
Chaiya since there was a black nameplate on the desk in front of
him that said: Tanit Chaiya, Executive Vice-President, Bangkok
Bank.

Shepherd could have called first, of course,
but he hadn’t. He had learned a long time ago that sometimes you
found out things about people when you turn up unannounced.
Sometimes they were even things you wanted to know.

Tanit was wearing a blue suit, white shirt,
and a nondescript blue tie. He looked like he had stepped straight
out of a Wal-Mart ad. Tall and skinny with heavy black glasses, he
bore an uncanny resemblance to Woody Allen, except for being a lot
taller. In Shepherd’s experience, it was unusual for a Thai to be
tall and look like Woody Allen, but Tanit actually was and he
actually did. It was even more unusual for a Thai to get straight
to the point, but Tanit actually did that, too.

“I have received a valid power of attorney
from our account holder authorizing me to accept your instructions
on his behalf,” Tanit said.

Shepherd wondered why he was being so careful
not to mention Charlie by name. Maybe somebody was listening.

“Do you have instructions for me?” Tanit
concluded with what he probably thought of as a smile on his
face.

“Yes, I do. The funds you hold in the
accounts in question are required for a major corporate transaction
and we need for you to wire them to Citibank in New York.”

“I am required by Thai banking regulations to
inquire as to the nature of this transaction.”

“My client is purchasing an interest in the
Los Angeles Lakers.”

Shepherd kept a straight face. Tanit kept a
straight face. In fact, Tanit’s face was so straight it didn’t move
at all, which was when it occurred to Shepherd that Tanit had no
idea what the Los Angeles Lakers were.

“That’s a basketball team,” he added.

Shepherd watched Tanit think about that.

“You client is buying a basketball team?” he
asked.

“Yes.”

“In Los Angeles?”

“Yes.”

Tanit examined Shepherd carefully for any
hint that he was being made the butt of some obscure joke, possibly
one with dubious cultural connotations in which he would end up
looking like an idiot. Shepherd smiled blandly at him. If somebody
was
listening, it would be interesting to see what Tanit did
next. Shepherd’s guess was that Tanit would just get on with the
script rather than run any risk of rocking the boat, and after a
moment that was exactly what Tanit did.

“You are asking on behalf of the account
holder to remit funds abroad?”

“Yes.”

“In what amount?”

“We require remittance of the total balance
of all the accounts that you are holding in his name or the names
of companies controlled by him. The remittance should be made in
United States dollars, of course.”

They were talking about nearly half a billion
dollars, but Tanit didn’t even blink.

“Of course,” he said. “And do you have the
details of how these funds should be remitted?”

Shepherd opened the flap of the envelope on
his lap and handed Tanit the instructions he had prepared.

“A complete list of the accounts to which the
funds should be wired and the amounts to be wired to each account
is included in these instructions.”

“Naturally I must also ask for appropriate
identification,” Tanit said, “to confirm formally that you may
exercise authority over the accounts listed in the power of
attorney and instruct me to execute the transfers.”

Shepherd pulled his passport out of his
pocket and handed it across his desk. Tanit accepted it, nodded
gravely, and carefully copied down the particulars on some kind of
form he had in front of him.

“As to the purpose of this remittance,” he
said, “I have recorded that the account holder will purchase the
Los Angeles Lackers.”

“It’s Lakers,” Shepherd said.
“L-A-K-E-R-S.”

“Ah,” Tanit said, then bent back to the form
and wrote some more.

When he was done, he returned Shepherd’s
passport, stapled the instructions he had been given to the form,
and pushed it across the desk for Shepherd’s signature. The form
was entirely in Thai, a language that in its written form is as
incomprehensible to westerners as Sanskrit, which is more or less
what it actually is. Shepherd signed the form anyway. Signing
documents you couldn’t read might not be the approved way to
conduct business in New York, but in Thailand it was an everyday
occurrence. Shepherd returned the form and the instructions to
Tanit, then he handed him the brown envelope filled with the
documents he had been carrying around.