by Wiley Brooks
Big Willie thought some more then frowned.
"I don’t know, Joey. That doesn’t solve your biggest problem,” he said. “The girls will be able to tell the cops a lot about you. It's only a matter of time before someone fits the pieces fit together. I don’t like it."
The two men sat in thought. Then Big Willie spoke again.
"There is one way to keep them from telling anyone about you."
Silence separated the two men, a generation apart, mentor and student, but now more than that. They had become friends. Well, more than friends, really.
Big Willie was the last in the line of Chirathivats in Penang. He was alone and missed having family. As did Joey. The bond between the two had evolved. They might not have been family biologically, but they were becoming one emotionally.
Both knew that Joey faced the biggest decision of his life. Big Willie said the choice Joey would make would forever define him.
Does grabbing a purse from an old lady make him a violent person? The real question pushed its way forward in his mind.
Could he kill? That’s what Big Willie was putting before him. Could he end the life of a young woman simply so he could do it again? And again?
When you make a living snatching purses from old ladies, you stop thinking of them as people. Often, the victim would not just be old, but elderly. Some even frail. They would usually fall to the pavement. Once, he yanked a purse so hard that he pulled the elderly woman into the street where she was struck by a taxi. He never knew what happened to her.
As he thought about that time, it dawned on him that he didn't really care what had happened to her. As he pondered it, he realized that she probably died. He let that sink in but felt nothing.
Nothing.
After some time, he looked Big Willie straight in the eyes. "I can do it," he said matter-of-factly.
The fat Thai simply nodded his head.
Two months later, Joey slit the throat of Annie Smith, a twenty-two-year-old graduate marine biology student at the Rosenthal School at the University of Miami. She was found in her room at a small hotel near the docks in Kuala Besut.
On her nightstand was a letter she had written to her parents dated the day before. In her last letter home, gathered up and shipped back to her grieving parents, Annie wrote that she was excited to share a boat the next day for the ninety-minute crossing to the Perhentian Islands. She told her parents that even before leaving Miami, Annie learned of Perhentian's stunningly clear waters, its fantastic coral reefs and its abundant marine life. One of her professors, who had been there himself, said it was one of the best undiscovered places to dive anywhere in the world.
But it wasn't to be. Like six young women after her, Annie would never make it to a special island. She would be charmed by a young American of partial Malaysian descent.
He would be a handsome young man whom a young woman would meet while sightseeing alone, or about to have dinner alone or doing something else alone. Always alone. A young man from North Carolina with a warm smile and beautifully expressive eyes would end up in her bed. He would make love to her and then she would die.
As he had meticulously planned, Joey would rummage through all her belongings. At the top of his list was always the money belt. Annie didn't disappoint him. She took it off as they were climbing into bed. He watched her lay it on the nightstand.
He fought the urge to just kill her so he could see what treasure was hidden in the belt. But this would be her last night on earth. “I’m not an animal,” he told himself. He wanted her to be enraptured right up until the end. He caressed her, treated her gently and then passionately. He waited for her to shake with pleasure before he cut her throat then watched her take her last breath.
He sat up and reached for the money belt. His heart raced. He realized that he was nervous. He needn't be. When he unzipped the money belt to look at what was inside, he found twelve-hundred dollars in cash, a passport, and three credit cards.
A new career was born.
That was two and a half years ago. On this day, Joey arrived at Big Willie's with everything of any value that he could find after blonde-haired, blue-eyed Amanda had bled out. He started the long motorcycle ride back from Mersing to Penang at about four in the morning. stopping only for food, gas and to relieve himself. He was exhausted with no sleep in more than a day. But Joey put the solitary ride to good use and added to it while taking a quick shower before going to Big Willie’s. He developed a new plan for his life and was eager to get the fat Thai’s take on it.
The bells on the door jingled as Joey walked into the tailor shop. Big Willie emerged from the back room and broke into a big smile when he saw Joey. He wrapped his arms around him as if he were a son returning from overseas service.
They took care of business, then Joey said he had an idea that he wanted Big Willie to weigh in on.
"I'm not going to be able to do this forever," Joey said. "I'm good at it and the girls like me. But I'm not going to always have my looks. Look, my face is already starting to show its age."
"You're a good-looking young man and will be a for a while," Big Willie said. “And you are making what now, nearly six thousand or so dollars a year? You are living well, young man. Why mess with that? It works for you.”
"Because it won’t last," Joey responded. "Look at me. I’m looking older.” He pointed to his eyes at lines Big Willie couldn’t really see.
“You’re nuts.”
“No, I’m not. I need young girls to make it all work. I’m a little bit older than them now, so we’re close. Five years from now, I won’t look as good to them. I just won’t. You know that.”
Big Willie realized that Joey was dead serious. He looked at him closely, chewing on his lower lip.
"That may be true," Big Willie said finally, "but you have lived well off the young ladies. You might be hard-pressed to find something to match it."
"Maybe not."
“Why not just move up to older women?”
“First, there are fewer of them. Beyond that, though, older women are not as willing to take risks. I rely on the girls being willing to take me alone back to their rooms the night we meet. Some older women might do that, but not many. So, why not move on to something entirely different?”
Joey said his biggest asset wasn’t how he looked, but how he acted.
“It doesn’t hurt that they think I’m a good-looking guy. That gets me in the door. But it’s my charm that makes them like me. It’s what makes me safe enough to hang out with and take back to their room. There’s no reason my charm ever should. That’s what I should be relying on. My charm.”
Big Willie had never seen Joey in action but had knew from early on that Joey oozed with charm. He could see how it could be totally disarming.
Joey laid his idea out for Big Willie.
Between victims, Joey had traveled around the country. He did it for two main reasons. First, he knew it helped him with the break-the-ice conversations if he could talk about the places the young women were thinking about visiting. In the past two and a half years, he had been to all the popular islands, many of the beaches and even a few undiscovered gems.
The other reason he did it, though, was to scope good places to find, target, kill and rob a victim. That’s why Amanda was murdered in Mersing and not on Tioman. Before her, he slit Sally Simpson’s throat in Lumut, not on Pangkor. Even Annie, his first victim, was done in Kuala Besut, not on Perhentian Kecil where she was headed. All his victims fit this pattern. Each died not at their next destination, but where they needed to spend the night before getting there.
Amanda was a classic Joey victim. He didn’t need to ask where she was going when he got on the bus in Melaka. Any backpacker getting on that bus was heading to Tioman Island. What he knew that she didn’t, though, was that they’d arrive too late to ride the tide out of the harbor, so would need to stay one night in Mersing. He learned this the day before when he hid his motorcycle in the port town. While ther
e, he checked the tides for the next few days. Once he knew the tides, it was easy to find a bus that would arrive after the last high tide of the day.
He then used his knowledge of Tioman itself to become a valued member of his new traveling band of backpackers, all of whom had just met that day on the bus. He regaled them with glimpses of what lie in store for them on the island. He talked about the cold water that cascaded from the waterfall near the top of the mountain in the center of the island. Hikers, he said, would strip naked and just let the water flow over them to cool off. It was so invigorating, he said. It felt wonderful. To those who heard his story, it felt exciting. They wanted to be there, stripping naked and feeling the water wash over them.
He might tell another story about the only bungalows and restaurant on Pulau Bumbon Besar that serves homemade fried chicken every Tuesday. After being on the road for months, a young woman’s heart would skip a beat at the mere thought of fried chicken.
Backpackers stayed in what many referred to as bungalow villages. They were small establishments that offered basic bungalow huts around a common, open-air restaurant overlooking a beach. They were just getting popular in Malaysia, but already were found widely on islands and beaches in Thailand.
He told Big Willie about a trip he had made to Koh Samui, a popular Thai island in the South China Sea. He explained that most were a collection of eight to ten bungalows built around a common restaurant, but sometimes more. There were even a couple bungalow villages with a larger hut that could sleep six to eight guests, like a hostel.
"These are happy places, Big Willie. Most of the guests are in their twenties. They like to party. The restaurant becomes the center of their world for the few days they are there. They eat all their meals there, then in the afternoon and at nighttime they sit at the tables playing games, talking about where they've been or plan to go, all the while drinking beer. Lots of beer. The restaurant is a gold mine."
"As I visited these places, Big Willie," Joey continued, "I realized that the difference between the ones that were hopping and the others boiled down to one thing. You know what it was?"
"Good food?"
"No. The popular places all had a guy that everyone loved running the place. And Big Willie, none was as charming as me!"
Big Willie frowned, clearly skeptical.
"What's the play here, Joey? I don't see the job."
"That's the beauty of it. There is no job. I want to build my own little bungalow village and run it till I die. It's totally legitimate. It's the best of everything. These places make good money. I'll be paid to be charming. I'll still get to screw beautiful young women. I just won't kill them. In fact, I'll want them to tell people about me and my place when they move on."
Joey was beaming. Big Willie wasn't.
"So," Big Willie said somewhat incredulously, "you want to buy a small hotel on a beach?"
"Not a hotel. And not buy."
"You want to steal one? I don't see how."
"I want to build,” Joey said emphasizing the word build, “my own bungalow village and restaurant."
Big Willie whistled. "That'll take more money than you have."
"Yeah, but I have an idea how I can get the money. You’re going to love it!"
He told Big Willie what he saw as the problem with young girls. You could take everything they travel with, but that was it. For the most part, his take would pay him usually about twenty-five-hundred dollars, sometimes more.
“That’s a good payday for you, Joey,” Big Willie said.
“No future in it,” Joey quickly responded.
Big Willie tilted his head in thought, then slightly nodded that he didn’t disagree.
“Older women have more money,” Joey said. “I see them all the time at Batu Ferringhi. They stay in hotels, not bungalows or guest houses. They dress better. When they are in the cafes, you can tell they order whatever they want. They don’t care about the price.”
“But you will have the same problem with them you have with the young girls. They won’t be traveling with a lot of cash. They’re using credit cards, so they don’t need so much cash. Sure, they’ll have more than Amanda, but not enough to build your bungalow place.”
“I know that. What they have, though, that the young girls don’t is a lot more money back home in the bank. And if that older woman is traveling alone, I bet that she controls her bank account, not some guy.”
"Wait a minute, Joey! You actually think you can get some woman you met last night to give you the keys to her bank account?"
"Yes! I'm sure of it! But no, not a one-night thing. It's a long play, Big Willie. It will take all my charms and a few weeks, maybe a month, but I can do it. I know I can."
"Hmmm. I don't know, Joey. You really think that some American woman is going to hand you – wait, how much do you think you need?"
"I can do the whole thing for fifty-thousand dollars."
"You're going to get a woman to give you, a stranger in a foreign country, fifty-thousand dollars?"
"She's not going to give it to me exactly. She's going to invest it in me."
"What?!!"
Joey explained that over the course of a few weeks, he would weave the two of them closer together. At some point, he said, the woman would want to know what he planned to do with his life.
“She’ll bring it up. Not me. Here’s the thing, I won’t tell her that I’m going to build one bungalow village. I’ll say I’m going to build a chain of them! Very American of me, don’t you think?”
The Thai gave a look that said he still wasn’t buying it.
“She’ll get to know me as a guy with a business degree and a business plan. Build one location to establish the brand, then add more. If I choose my lady right, she’ll like the idea. I’ll have her wanting to invest. I’m sure I can do it.”
"So, she invests," Big Willie said, adding emphasis to the word invests, "in your plan."
"Yes."
"And then what?"
"Same as the others."
"You kill her?"
"Yes. But I’ll need to make it look like an accident. Too many people will know about me. I'll be distraught. Then, as soon as I can I’ll disappear to become Yusof again."
Big Willie stroked his chin. He poured Joey and himself glasses of tea. There was a long silence.
"It could work," Big Willie finally said. "I bet, though, that you'll get tired of being a respectable businessman and get back to dabbling in ill-gotten gains," he added with a grin.
"I don't think so."
Joey told Big Willie that he wanted a better persona. Not a different one. One with a backstory that would build on the one he was already using. He needed to become the businessman he was going to pretend to be.
"I know Joey Jackson. We should keep him. I am Joey Jackson."
Big Willie thought for a bit.
"We need to make you look like a businessman,” he told Joey. “You know what they say: Clothes make the man. You'll need new clothes, a completely new wardrobe. You’ve been dressing and acting like a backpacker. I’ll give you a new look, top to bottom.”
He thought some more.
“You think this woman will visit your apartment?”
“I don’t know, probably. I’m thinking I’ll find her at one of the hotels in Batu Ferringhi. I see no reason not to hunt where I live this time.”
“Probably a benefit. You can take as long you need to find the right woman.”
Joey became animated as he envisioned wooing a woman at the beach. He spoke about bringing her back to his apartment for a home-cooked meal and wow her with his kitchen skills.
Big Willie started to see where Joey was going with all this. His inner-tailor kicked in.
“You’ll need nice things hanging in your closet and folded in your drawers,” Big Willie said. “That’s my department. A couple business suits, dress shirts, leather shoes, the works. Leave that stuff to me.”
Again there was a silence as the two me
n thought through everything.
"If you were serious about this, you’d have a company set up,” the fat Thai said. “A bank account, too. But not just any bank account. It’ll look legit but once you have her money and are ready to stop being Joey Jackson, you can close it and not worry about it being traced back to you should anyone start to look. My family in Singapore can do all that. People hide millions of dollars in Singapore all the time, so fifty-thousand dollars will be easy for them."
Big Willie pulled a sheet of paper from his desk and a pencil. He made categories and put amounts next to them. He wrote a category called “pursuit,” then looked at Joey.
"It’s going to take some time – who knows how long – for you to find the right woman. You might find a good one right away, but probably not. You might have to – what? – date” – he said the word as if a question – “several to find the right one. You need to be able to pay for all of that. Dinners. Sightseeing. Taxis. Whatever.
Big Willie told Joey that the woman didn’t need to think he was rich, but that he did have the resources to treat her well.
Joey agreed and they came up with a sum. Big Willie wrote it next to the word pursuit. When he totaled it all up, it came to ten-thousand dollars.
“You have to spend ten grand to get fifty. You sure you want to do this?”
“Yeah,” Joey said, “It’s fifty that will set me up for life. Here’s a problem, though. I don’t have that much. I have about seven-thousand dollars.”
Silence again filled the space between them, then Big Willie spoke.
"Maybe you should do one more young lady. That would put you close enough. It could be your last. Well, next to last."
Joey left Big Willie thinking about finding one more girl to kill and rob. Of course, he would do it. He had a plan and Joey always stuck to his plan. The only question in his mind was where to do it.
He had held to Big Willie's rule to not work where you live. That's why he had never targeted anyone in Penang. But maybe, since this would be the last one, it would be okay to do it here. He knew exactly where to go in George Town. Besides, he hadn’t lived in George Town itself in a while. As he rode his motorcycle back to his apartment in Batu Ferringhi, he decided that tomorrow he would go hunting.
