by Harlan Wolff
“Why are you smiling?” George asked.
“Here’s the situation, George: Carl’s been reeking of money lately and spending it fast, and that always gets a man a reputation around here. The major in charge of the case is already in cahoots with the prosecutor. He’s his fucking brother in law for Christ’s sake,” Louis said and started laughing.
“What exactly does that mean?”
“It means this is just business as usual. They’re going to make Carl pay. Oh yeah, and Carl’s good old friend, the colonel knows all this, he works with the prosecutor’s cousin at Crime Suppression. Bet he didn’t tell Carl that, now did he?”
“How do you know all this?” George asked.
“Come on George. I am from New Orleans, and we do three things very well there: food, jazz, and corruption. I’ve got more people than a Cecille B. DeMille picture. I always know what’s going on.”
“Lay off the Cajun nostalgia Louis, you have no great love for food. You never eat, which is why you look like a stick insect. You hate jazz and everything you know about corruption you learned here. So stop playing me like one of your clients, and start talking to me. This is for Carl.”
“Okay George, I hired the daughter of the number two in Special Branch. She’s not very bright, and she’s homely as hell, and I’ve never got anything for her to do, but paying her wages gives me access. I keep her in the file room and pay her big bonuses. When I saw Carl all over the papers, I asked her to talk to her dad and find out what was going on.”
“I see,” George said.
“You have to admit it’s a bit of a joke. Carl Engel, our very own mister fix-it and conduit to the police force, is now getting fucked over by the police. He paid them so much goddamn money over the years they should have made him a general, given him a fucking medal, maybe even put up a statue of him. God knows he’s paid them enough. Mind you, the police extort money from each other so we shouldn’t be too surprised when they rip off their friends? You’ve got to admit, it’s pretty funny, Carl’s been a bagman for the foreign community for years - talk about killing the goose! You don’t think that’s funny?”
“I thought you were a friend of his.”
“I am.” Louis told him still chuckling, “I love the guy, I learnt a lot from him, but it’s still the funniest thing I’ve heard in years.”
“What do you think he should do?”
“Well,” he paused for thought, “I know what he shouldn’t do.”
“And what’s that?”
“He sure as hell shouldn’t hire a lawyer. Unless of course, he thinks the police aren’t doing a good enough job of fucking him, and they might need some help.” Louis was laughing uncontrollably, and it was beginning to annoy George, so he got up to leave. He was almost through the glass door when he turned around and walked back and stood in front of Louis’ desk.
“One more question before I go.”
“Shoot,” Louis replied, trying to be serious.
“If one of your clients’ came to you in the same situation what would you tell him he should do?”
Louis looked directly at him and gave up trying to control himself, his laughter was bordering on hysterical. “That’s what’s so goddamn funny George. Don’t you get it? If someone walked into my office and asked for help after getting in such a terrible mess, don’t you know what I’d do? Come on George, you must know the answer.”
“Just tell me so I can get out of here before I forget we’re friends, Louis. I’m worried about Carl, and you’re being a cocksucker.”
“Alright, this is what I’d do, because there’d only be one sensible thing I could do George! I’d call Carl fucking Engel. I’d call Carl Engel, don’t you see how funny it is? I deal with regulatory bodies and the taxman, but for a criminal case I would always bring Carl in.” But George was already on his way out the door.
“Tell Carl to come and see me if he thinks I can help, and tell him we’re all worried about him,” Louis yelled after George.
CHAPTER 15
“I drank so much Vodka last night that this morning I woke up with a Russian accent.”
– Anonymous
That evening George found Carl in the White Tiger bar. He was sitting alone in a booth in the far corner smoking his pipe, and there was an ice bucket, two glasses, and a bottle of Stolichnaya on the table in front of him. The smoke from Carl’s pipe formed a cloud above the table, and it filled the room with the exotic, pungent smell of Turkish and Syrian tobacco.
George stopped at the bar and spoke to the woman washing glasses at the sink. The White Tiger opened the doors at four, to let the cleaners in, stack the shelves, and restock the fridges with beer. The girls would start drifting in after seven and would spend the next hour making up and attacking street-food like locusts. The bar wouldn’t get any customers until after nine o’clock when all the food bowls had been stashed, the smell of nail polish was gone, and the tattoos and tits were once again on full display.
“How long has he been here?” George asked the woman, pointing across the room at Carl with his thumb.
She shrugged and said, “Him here already. I come, and him here already.”
“Did he speak to you?” George asked.
“Him drunk. I tell him no smoking. Him say wake-wake. I no sleeping, I tell him me awake. I think friend you very crazy.”
George talked the cleaner into selling him a beer, took it off the bar, and walked over to Carl and sat down opposite him.
“What’s all this about telling people to wake up?” he asked.
“It’s a fucking wake George, Nadia’s wake. The chubby one keeps asking me to put my pipe out, as if this place could smell any worse, and I told her this is a wake. Anyway, it’s about time you showed up, Nadia’s been expecting you,” Carl said, looking at the ceiling.
“I wasn’t planning to tell you, but I went to see Louis today,” George said.
“How was the old shyster?” Carl asked as he poured vodka into a glass and pushed it across the table.
“Same as always.”
“High on cocaine, secretary twat, and the misfortunes of others then?”
“I didn’t know he used cocaine.”
“You didn’t think he was born like that, did you?”
“I guess not. By the way, what’s a twat? Is it cunt?”
“I forgot you yanks don’t speak English. It’s not the same at all, George. You see, Louis and all his lawyers are cunts, whereas a twat is the fluffy thing between his secretary’s legs. I hope that helps.”
“Clear as Mississippi mud,” George said.
“I’ll teach you English eventually, George, it’s the least I can do.”
“To Nadia,” George declared loudly, looking up to the same point in the ceiling that Carl had been staring at. Then they both downed a shot of vodka in one gulp.
“Yes, to Nadia,” Carl said, and then reached for the bottle again.
“So, what brought this on?”
“Brought what on?” Carl asked back.
“A wake for Nadia, why now?”
“Because I’ve found the killer and already set the dogs on him. He’s a Hungarian with more money than taste. Owns half of Bangkok according to the sign outside, but his office is all white, like a dentist’s waiting room. White walls, white floors, white ceilings, white tables and chairs, even the computer monitors were white, for fuck’s sake.”
“Maybe he thinks he’s God. Did you find out why she was killed?” George asked.
“Not yet, but I gave the colonel enough information and a lump of cash, so he’ll be able to find out for me. When the police bring the Hungarian in for questioning, then we will know more. I promised the colonel loads of cash for him to spread around once we start getting some answers,” Carl said.
George sipped slowly from his glass and then asked, “That should solve your problems with the police too. So, what happens now? Where do you go from here?”
“I expect I will be miserable for
a while, I never realised how much I was going to miss her until a few hours ago, George. Funny thing - life, we know so little about it when all is said and done,” Carl slurred as he reached again for the bottle.
“She was good people,” George said holding his glass out for Carl to pour vodka into.
“Just another sad life that ended badly. We’ve seen a few of those, old friend,” Carl said.
“Did you ever find out where her sadness came from?”
“Not really, George, not really.”
“I got some information from Louis today. You need to know the prosecutor is a relative of the major, and your colonel knows the prosecutor’s cousin. Louis said they were all in cahoots,” George told him.
“I’m not surprised,” Carl said. “And what’s a Rolex between friends?”
“A Rolex?”
“Yeah, a Rolex. The colonel got another Rolex off me.”
“I don’t understand,” George told him.
“I’m being played again, it’s nothing I’m not used to.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing. Let him keep thinking I’m a sucker. He won’t let me go to prison if he thinks there’s more money to be made from me. It’s like insurance, and they only let you die when you run out of money. The only important thing is Nadia’s killer gets caught. Making sure that happens just takes money and a talent for herding cats. As long as they don’t realise I’m working them while they’re working me, everything will turn out fine.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” George told him.
“We’re way past that now, George. Battles take time, and justice costs money.” Carl shoved the vodka bottle at George, “I’m going to be gone for a couple of days; I have to jump on a plane while I still have possession of my passport.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t come back,” George told him.
“There’s something I need to do, and then I’ll be back.”
“How long will this thing take?”
“I’ll be back Monday,” Carl told him, “In the meantime, it’s Nadia’s wake, and we should get drunk.”
CHAPTER 16
“When it was over, it was not really over, and that was the trouble.”
– Frank Yerby
Carl’s worst hangover in living memory began the moment the phone rang beside his bed. “Carl here, good morning,” he mumbled as he looked around for drinking water. There was an open bottle on the floor by the bed, but he had no idea what it was, or how it got there. He drank from it anyway. What the fuck happened last night? Carl’s brain didn’t answer; it had gone on strike.
“Morning? It’s two-thirty in the afternoon, are you hung-over or still drunk?” Colonel Pornchai barked down the phone at him.
Carl drank more water in the hope it would help his tongue work. “Woz up?” he asked, still waiting for the water to kick in and make it possible for him to speak in proper sentences.
“What do you mean, what’s up? You fucked me, that’s what’s up,” the colonel yelled down the phone.
“Hold on to that thought,” Carl said, “I’ll call you back in two minutes.”
Staggering, he made his way across the floor to the bathroom, got down on his knees and threw up into the porcelain toilet bowl. Then he tried to stand up, changed his mind, and threw up again. Whatever happened the day before, it must have been attempted suicide. The worst hangovers are not when you worry you are going to die, the real ones are so bad you are scared you aren’t going to die. Carl wished he was dead. After brushing his teeth and throwing water on his face, Carl went back to the bed and called the colonel. “You sound angry, calm down and tell me what the problem is?” he said when the colonel answered.
“Calm down? Don’t tell me to calm down. Fuck you and telling me to calm down. Your stupid theory with the telephone signals means I have to go and answer questions at headquarters.”
“Headquarters?” Carl asked.
“Yes, headquarters and the chief of police is mad as hell. It seems your suspect is a friend of the Interior Minister, and when I told your Hungarian to come in and answer questions, he called him. The Chief of Police is the Minister’s brother in case you have forgotten. Thanks to you I could finish up my career in a wooden immigration hut on some forgotten border checkpoint.”
“What are you going to tell him?” Carl asked.
“Well, I sure as hell can’t tell him I checked phone records for the boyfriend of the victim.”
“Sorry I landed you in trouble,” Carl said, even though he was far too ill to care.
“Trouble? Trouble? Thanks to you I have lost face, and now I could lose my career.”
“All you need is a good story,” Carl told him.
“Go fuck yourself, and don’t ever talk to me about this stupid case again. I won’t help you anymore.”
Carl heard the line go quiet and realised the colonel had hung-up. He did that a lot when things weren’t going his way. There had been months when they worked together but had hardly spoken. The colonel wasn’t about to try and live on his paycheck of eight hundred dollars per month, so he’d be back to take Carl’s money, but the colonel always wanted to be the one in charge, and he certainly didn’t want to stick his neck out any further than he had to. The temper tantrum was strategic, and the colonel was almost certainly exaggerating the amount of trouble he was in. Carl figured he’d show up at headquarters, the chief would delegate and wouldn’t be there. The colonel would tell a cock and bull story about why he was investigating the Hungarian, then he would receive a dressing down from a senior officer, promise to cease and desist, and that would be the end of the matter. The phone call was not about letting Carl know there was a problem, it was about not giving Carl his money back. The colonel wasn’t going to deliver, and he was going to keep the money he had already taken from Carl. They’d played this game before.
The future looked bleak, and Carl still had a bloody awful hangover. There was only one course of action; he went back to sleep. Hours later when he woke up, he decided he would solve the case the old fashioned way. Pulling strings wasn’t going to work this time, and the colonel wasn’t going to play ball so Carl would wear out some shoe leather instead. He was going to solve the case with good, old-fashioned detective work. That wasn’t the best way to solve a murder in Thailand, a foreigner alone can’t do much, but he wasn’t walking away so it would have to do. Carl told himself, the only way to investigate a crime was to begin at the beginning. In the meantime, he had a plane to catch but come Monday, when he got back, he would start over again.
Room service brought coffee, and he drank it hot. Then he shit, showered, put some clothes on, and packed his suitcases. It was a real bastard of a hangover, and he still felt like death warmed up, but he carried both suitcases down to the lobby and checked out of the hotel anyway, leaving one of the bags with the concierge. At the concierge desk, he scribbled a note for George, and then he walked out of the hotel and got in a taxi, still wondering where he’d been the day before.
CHAPTER 17
“The Potemkin city of which I wish to speak here is none other than our dear Vienna herself.”
– Adolf Loos
It was a pious Sunday morning in Vienna. The city’s grand architecture stood in remembrance of a lost empire and made tourists humble. This was where Beethoven, Mozart, and Schubert had composed symphonies. Where Freud had turned Oedipus loose on the world, and where Marie Antoinette had enjoyed her first slice of cake. This morning there was a chill in the air, the streets were empty, and the only audible sound was distant church bells. The shops were shut for the day, and the single sign of life was an empty tram on its ghostlike journey to the city centre. Carl walked up Lerchenfelder Strasse dressed in the cotton of the tropics; shivering, unshaven, with a pipe in his mouth, puffing smoke like a wheezing dragon. Nobody peering out of one of the windows of the apartment buildings lining both sides of the street would have made the mistake of thinking he
was a local. Even his confident walk was blasphemy on this old-fashioned early Austrian Sunday morning.
He found the locked entrance to the apartment block between a shop window of dummies in bridal wear, and a window full of military books in German. The shops were closed, of course, and there was not a single person around to ask about the protocol regarding locked doors on Sunday mornings in Vienna.
He balanced his reading glasses on his nose and peered around the dark alcove that appeared to be the only way in or out. To the left of the locked door was a dark panel with fading slips of paper giving the names of the dozen occupants of the pre-war building. He saw the right name and pushed the button beside it. He waited for her voice to come out of the louvred metal speaker on the bottom of the panel, but instead, there was a whirring sound as the door unlocked. He pushed the door open and went inside.
Once inside, he found himself in a quadrant with a cobbled stone courtyard at its centre. Behind its ballgowns, he had located the petticoats of old Vienna hiding from the world. These were cobblestones that had once been stamped on by men in jackboots as Vienna’s Jewish families were dragged from their homes. The building had survived the allied bombs, but like everything else to do with the war it was hidden in a cloud of amnesia. Perhaps that was what gave Vienna its remarkable charm: how hard everybody worked on maintaining the veneer of polite respectability. In many ways, it reminded him of Thailand.
He found the apartment door in the corner of the third-floor landing. The door was ajar, so he pushed it and went in. Inside was the sort of sitting room you would expect to find your grandmother in. The furniture, pictures on the wall, and carpets were all old Europe. One entire wall was an impressive bookshelf of serious looking German tomes and beside the books, in front of the window, were two flowery armchairs with faded white doily lace on the armrests. The attractive woman sitting on one of the chairs was no grandma though.
Maria Bajic was elegant and sophisticated. She had the same blonde hair as her sister Nadia, but that was where the resemblance ended. Maria’s hair was shorter, and she tied it back in a bun. Her face was stern and, on her nose, sat the heavy black-rimmed glasses of academia. She was dressed in a medium length dark skirt and a matching waistcoat over a cream blouse. Unlike her sister, she wore no makeup, and her English was perfect and without an accent.
