Gunshine State Page 16

  Chance parked the motorbike at the entrance to a long strip of go-go bars and pubs, slipped off his vest, helmet and balaclava, carried them under his arm as he waded into the sea of people.

  Tavener had called his mobile phone earlier, said to meet him at Soi Cowboy, a notorious strip of go-go bars catering to foreigners.

  ‘I just want to go back to the hotel and have a hot shower,’ replied Chance.

  ‘Just be there,’ Tavener concluded and the line went dead.

  The last daylight had melted into the horizon, replaced with a forest of pulsating neon that bathed everything in a ghostly pink hue.

  Chance spotted the meeting place, a Wild West-themed bar, spied Tavener at the table nearest the entrance, resplendent in a blue shirt with bright red flowers, his ubiquitous fishing cap. Kate and another much older man Chance didn’t recognise sat with him. Several Thai women dressed in knee-length boots, white miniskirts, bikini tops, and cowboy hats stood nearby, called out to the passing trade.

  ‘How did it go today?’ Kate said as Chance sat down.

  ‘A fucking waste of time.’ A small bottle of beer appeared in front of Chance. He drained half, looked at the stranger over the top of the bottle, unsure how much else to say in front of him. The old man didn’t register his arrival, gazed into the crowd with practiced disinterest.

  Tavener cleared his throat, tipped his beer bottle in the direction of the old man. ‘Gary, this is Huey.’

  ‘Huey?’

  The old man shifted on his stool to face Chance. ‘Yeah, like the helicopter.’ Huey’s face had a gaunt, sallow appearance, accentuated by his grey crew cut and a slight underbite where his lower lip jutted out.

  ‘You don’t have to be shy about what you say around Huey, he was an old pal of my dad’s,’ said Tavener. ‘They served in Vietnam together.’

  Chance watched the pudgy doorman lift the curtain to the entrance for a customer, caught sight of a slither of blue neon, a mass of serpentine legs shuffling on a stage.

  ‘And what exactly did you and his dad do in ’Nam?’ Chance emphasised the last word.

  ‘This and that,’ said Huey, his eyes following two passing bar girls.

  Chance nodded unenthusiastically. ‘Just what we need, another barfly who speaks in code.’

  ‘I’ve already appraised Huey of our situation.’ Tavener smiled. ‘He assures me he can provide us with a little off-the-books technical support.’

  ‘Lias here tells me you’ve got yourself a shitstorm of trouble, boy.’

  ‘Lias?’ said Chance, eyebrows raised. Tavener ignored him. ‘Old Huey here looks like he has his work cut out staying upright. So unless by help you mean buying cheap Viagra, I’m not sure what use he can be.’

  Huey turned to Tavener. ‘Boy’s got a nasty streak to match his ugly face.’

  ‘Things will get off to a much better start if you don’t call me boy,’ Chance said.

  ‘Believe me, boy, there’s still enough strength left in these bones to give you a hiding.’

  ‘Try it, I’m not above hitting an old man.’

  ‘For God’s sake, both of you, enough.’ Kate slammed an open palm on the table, bottles shook, a couple of nearby cowgirls looked in their direction.

  Chance and the old man glared at each other.

  ‘Let’s go for a walk.’ Tavener stood, threw a couple of purple-coloured Thai bank notes on the table. ‘After you, Huey.’

  Huey led them away from the brightly lit strip with surprising speed, down several dark winding side streets. He stopped outside a restaurant, waved to a young man stacking plastic chairs inside, disappeared down a narrow alleyway along the side of the building.

  By the time Chance and the others caught up, Huey was halfway up a set of dimly lit stairs. He unlocked a metal-reinforced door. A single bulb flickered to life, revealed a large room with dusty, covered tables and chairs stacked against one side, crates and beer kegs against another. In the middle sat an old pool table, half covered by a white sheet. A wooden counter took up most of the far side of the room, along with a set of stairs and a doorway, both leading to darkness.

  Chance walked over to a barred window, looked over the alley along the side of the building. ‘What is this place?’

  ‘A little social club I used to run,’ said Huey. ‘Lias told me you needed some place off the grid. Reckon this’ll fit the bill.’

  ‘More rooms through the doorway behind the bar,’ said Tavener. ‘Sleeping quarters, a functioning bathroom. We need a place away from Milo’s prying eyes. Somewhere we can talk, put plan B into action.’

  ‘Plan B?’ said Chance.

  ‘Figuring out how to whack this guy Issarapong wants dead without winding up in the hands of Gao’s people or the Thai police.’

  ‘Use this place whenever you want.’ Huey handed Tavener a key. ‘Some Thai folks run a soup kitchen downstairs during the day, but they won’t bother you none.’

  ‘What’s upstairs?’ said Chance.

  ‘Take a look for yourself.’

  The stairs emerged onto a roofed terrace furnished with a selection of long-dead potted plants and a few mismatched pieces of furniture.

  Huey sat in a derelict-looking cane chair, fumbled in the pocket of his shirt, produced something he stuck in his mouth and lit. A swirl of pungent marijuana smoke twisted in the air around him.

  ‘Strictly medicinal purposes, son, if you were figuring on asking.’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ said Chance.

  ‘Most of the crew I used to run with are gone—’ Huey dragged on the joint, exhaled, emitted a moist cough, ‘ —but I still know one or two folks around town, might be useful. You want anything, just ask.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Chance.

  ‘Not doing it for you. Couldn’t care less if they use you for target practice.’ The American passed the joint to Kate, who accepted it enthusiastically. ‘Doing it for Lias here. Weren’t for his daddy, I wouldn’t be alive.’

  ‘Huey’s already helped me circumvent Milo’s restriction on firearms.’ Tavener hitched up the front of his tropical shirt.

  Chance saw the butt of a small pistol tucked in his pants, the wooden grip dark against Tavener’s pale stomach.

  ‘When do I get one of those?’ said Chance.

  Huey flashed a crooked smile, looked like an old buzzard. ‘When you’re old enough to use it.’

  Huey and Tavener broke into laughter.

  SEVEN

  Tavener drained the dregs of beer from the plastic cup, dropped it on the ground. He inhaled the dense, mentholated air pushed around by the stadium’s ceiling fans, his eyes moving between Saradet and the two Muay Thai boxers in their respective corners.

  Gangsters could always be relied upon to like the fights, he mused as he signalled for another drink. Not that the desire to watch two men beat the shit out of each other was restricted to males, if the number of Thai and foreign women in the crowd was any indication.

  Saradet sat ringside, one of the few Thais in an area apparently reserved for foreigners. He used the break between rounds to engage in an animated conversation on his mobile phone. Seated on either side of him were two granite-faced bodyguards who looked as though they might have done a bit of time in the ring themselves.

  You sure have landed yourself in it this time, Lias was how Huey had summed up his predicament when they met up the previous night.

  It hadn’t been the first time in his career Tavener stumbled across dead bodies in a hotel suite. Not running, going after Chance and the Norliss woman, thinking they had the heroin or would take him to the person who did, was a mistake. A far more serious error had been getting involved with an amateur like Gao.

  In his experience, survival was twenty percent luck and wits, eighty percent the ability to compartmentalise. You had to focus, not take shit personally, stay uninvolved. He’d broken all three rules big time. All he could do now was try to get out of the situation alive. His Australian friends wouldn’t be much help. Kate
had spirit. She reminded him of his first wife, a red-haired Texan with a mouth like a sailor. But she wasn’t much use in their current situation. As for Chance, he had potential but was still learning, a blunt knife when the situation called for a scalpel.

  Thank Christ for Huey. He spoke fluent Thai, knew people and his old bar would prove a useful bolthole. So would the Saturday night special ‘belly gun’ Huey had sourced for Tavener. Back in the States people would have called it a woman’s gun, but it was perfect for Bangkok. Fuck Milo and his no-weapons-until-they-have-a-plan shit. Tavener didn’t trust anything that antsy, half-breed scumbag said, felt safer with the chunk of black metal nestled against his skin.

  Saradet was off the phone now, his attention on the two fighters in the ring. After spending the first few rounds probing each other for weaknesses, the boxers were becoming aggressive, unleashing a barrage of jabs and solid kicks on each other. Both men had finely chiselled, muscular bodies, looked evenly matched as far as Tavener could tell. Indeed, were it not for their different-coloured shorts, one in blue, the other red, he’d have difficulty telling them apart.

  Blue seemed to favour the clinch, holding his opponent close so he could knee him in the kidneys. Red kept trying to break away, get some distance so he could put all his weight into a combination of left-right hooks.

  Many of the foreigners and all of the Thai spectators back in the stadium’s bleachers were on their feet now, their yelling more frenzied with each blow. Saradet sat back, appraised the action. Not given to impetuous actions, the kind of man used to analysing a situation before acting, the perfect personality for a senior enforcer.

  Tavener had followed Saradet around Bangkok all day, hoping to find a chink in his armour, a weakness, something that would suggest the right place and time to do the hit.

  Saradet always had two bodyguards with him, travelled nearly everywhere by car, minimised time spent on the street. The only exception had been when Saradet visited a section of the city known as Little Arabia, the streets too narrow and crowded to take the Benz.

  Tavener had followed Saradet through a warren of laneways lined with beauty parlours, souvenir shops and restaurants selling Middle Eastern food, jammed with families on vacation, overweight men and women in full burqa, to a hotel where he met several men in traditional Arab dress.

  He counted at least half a dozen times he could have just walked up to Saradet, shot him with his Saturday night special. But it would have been a suicide mission. Tavener didn’t believe in suicide missions, had spent his whole career avoiding them.

  A Thai woman appeared with a tray of beers. Her face broke into a wide smile as Tavener gave her a note, waved away the change. He loved the way Thai women smiled. It was like being hit with a concentrated beam of warmth. One of the many things he loved about the place. The climate was good, the people friendly. Under different circumstances he’d move here in a flash, find a nice bar stool, affix himself to it, grow old like Huey.

  He laughed to himself. Stake-out dreams, the term he gave to how the mind wandered when you were tailing a target. A lot of stakeouts since he’d joined the Drug Enforcement Agency at the age of twenty-four. All those years he’d spent fighting the so-called war on drugs until he‘d finally left the Agency, gone to work for himself.

  Tavener felt the roar of the crowd, looked up. The boxer in the blue shorts lay unconscious on the canvas, his opponent bowing to the crowd, both hands held in front of his face like he was praying.

  A moment later, he noticed the young woman who had suddenly materialised in the seat next to Saradet. She had long dark hair and pale skin. Her face was a little pouty for his tastes but the woman’s figure looked like it had been poured into her black jeans and halter top.

  Most interestingly, she wasn’t Saradet’s wife.

  The American smiled.

  ‘Bingo,’ he whispered.

  EIGHT

  Third morning in a row, Kate waited in the café at the intersection of Sukhumvit Road—Bangkok’s main drag—and the street where the woman’s luxury condo was situated.

  Kate banked on the woman being a creature of habit, breathed a sigh of relief when she appeared, turned onto Sukhumvit and headed for the nearest Skytrain station.

  Kate stood at the opposite end of the Skytrain carriage, waited two stops until the woman got off, followed her through the crowded platform, down the stairs to the street below.

  Kate guessed her target was a similar age to herself, mid-twenties. The woman walked a block, stopped at the first of a row of vendors, bought a garland of jasmine, a small orange candle, several sticks of incense, entered the courtyard of the Ewaran Shrine. Kate had looked up the shrine on the internet after following the woman here the last two mornings. One of the most popular in Bangkok, not strictly Buddhist, the golden statue a Thai representation of the four-faced Brahma God, Than Tao Mahaprom, a god of mercy, kindness, sympathy and impartiality, one face representing each trait.

  The woman lit her incense from one of several oil lamps positioned around the courtyard, joined a long line of people, waited patiently with her offerings. The statue sat in a hut inlaid with coloured glass and surrounded by railing covered in garlands and narrow concrete troughs filled with sand containing a forest of smouldering incense sticks.

  When her turn came, she draped the jasmine over the railing, lit the candle with a lighter from her tote bag and placed it and the incense sticks in the sand. She stood for a moment, head bowed, hands held together in front of her face, moved to make way for the next person.

  Hedging her bets, thought Kate, cheeky bitch. Praying to Buddha for good fortune, on the one hand. Fucking Saradet, living in the apartment he probably paid for, on the other.

  Chance and Tavener referred to her as Saradet’s girlfriend but Kate understood the correct term was mia noi, or ‘minor wife.’ She wasn’t sure what Saradet’s actual wife would have made of the arrangement, but Kate could see the advantages from the girlfriend’s point of view. Money, a nice apartment, the advantages of a male without the bullshit—no nagging, no sullen guy flaked in front of the TV every night, getting shitty as the years passed him by.

  As she watched the woman leave the shrine compound and walk back toward the stairway to the Skytrain, Kate couldn’t help but feel strangely envious. If nothing else, the woman knew what she wanted, looked after herself. Kate could take a lesson or two from her.

  She was still pissed off at Chance. His words—Why the hell are you in Thailand anyway?—burnt every time she thought of them. Arrogant bastard obviously thought he was the reason she’d followed him to Thailand. She did like him. He had a simplicity she found attractive. There was no guile in him. What you see is what you get. At least that’s what she used to think. Whatever slender thread of mutual attraction that might have been developing between them had disappeared along with his old face.

  Tavener had suggested putting a tail on the woman. He had followed her and Saradet after the Thai boxing, as they’d driven, sans bodyguards, to a run-down hotel complex, rooms available by the night or the hour, minimal staff.

  ‘It’s the perfect set-up,’ Tavener told them. ‘Out of the way, easy to get into and, most of all, he doesn’t take his bodyguards to bed with him when they fuck.’

  ‘Makes perfect sense to me,’ Kate had quipped. ‘He’s a man and men follow their dicks.’

  The comment garnered a sly guffaw from Milo, who leaned against the wall, a glass of scotch in his hand. The Cockney was half cut every time she saw him now.

  Chance, who looked like he’d been falling asleep when Tavener began his spiel, sat up, his eyes suddenly alive with the possibilities. ‘I like it. We follow the girlfriend, hope she hooks up with Saradet and they go back to that hotel.’

  ‘You lads have been following Saradet around Bangkok for the better part of a week, trying to find a chink in his armour, and got nothing.’ Milo gulped his drink. ‘Don’t see what we’ve got to lose.’

  The four of them h
ad agreed Kate was the obvious candidate to tail the woman. It was a relief to be useful and have an excuse to get out of their hotel and away from a sullen Chance and a sleazy Milo. The latter had taken increased interest in Kate since they’d been in Bangkok, constantly hanging around her, even offering to act as a tour guide to the sights.

  Kate, who had never followed anyone before, attempted to act inconspicuous, kept her distance while not losing sight of the woman. Not that any of her precautions seemed to matter. This part of Bangkok, Sukhumvit Road leading to the retail area of Siam Square, was farang central. A foreigner, wandering aimlessly, let alone a foreign woman, attracted zero attention. On top of that, apart from her brief interludes at the shrine, her target was almost permanently plugged into her smart phone, gazing at the screen or, earplugs attached, listening to music or talking, oblivious to the world around her.

  Kate shadowed her target along an elevated walkway, watched her turn off at the entrance to one of several large, modern shopping malls at Siam Square. The place was cool and quiet, not yet crowded with shoppers. Kate pretended to be interested in various window displays as she tailed the woman to a chic-looking café, exposed wood, generous booths separated by smoked glass covered with intricate patterns, experimental art on the walls.

  Kate took the booth adjoining the one occupied by the woman, sat with her back to the smoked glass partition, listened to the Thai’s meandering one-way conversation on the mobile.

  Kate had started learning Thai to relieve the boredom of her time in Sri Racha. She’d never tried to learn a language before, found it hard at first, trying to make herself understood in mangled, half-formed sentences, correctly pronounce the tones. But the hotel staff were patient, welcomed the diversion. She’d gradually improved and, to her surprise, found she had a talent for it. She wasn’t fluent by any means, but she could listen in to conversations like the one happening over her shoulder, pick up the gist of what was said.

  Kate heard the phrase maaw duu or fortune teller. The woman gave a rundown of her most recent session, the fortune teller’s advice about an overseas trip she was planning.