by Harlan Wolff
“She constantly made me feel like I was failing her,” Carl muttered, almost to himself.
“Yes, that’s a symptom of childhood abuse.”
“So what was she thinking? Was everything she told me a lie?”
“No,” Maria said, “probably not everything. She was obviously happy when she was with you, but she knew it wasn’t going to last. Her past was always in front of her, waiting to trip her up. She thought you would find out eventually, or her enemies would find her and that would ruin everything. One way or another, you would have found out what she was.”
Carl wasn’t about to tell Maria he hadn’t planned to stick around long enough to find out. There was no point. Would the baby have changed everything? If he’d known she was pregnant, he wouldn’t have gone.
“Can you tell me who she was running away from?”
“She never said. When she ran, the past was abandoned, forgotten. That’s why it was out of character for her to tell me about what she’d left behind.”
“And you don’t know what she was doing before she left Bangkok?”
“No, she wouldn’t say, but I assumed blackmail.”
“The email she sent you, telling you her life was in danger, was written when?” Carl asked.
“The day she left for the South, and not long before she met you. Nadia wrote, ‘I have made a dangerous and powerful enemy, and if he finds me he will certainly kill me.’ That’s how I knew it wasn’t you.”
“Didn’t you ask who this enemy was?”
“Of course I did,” Maria replied angrily, “but all she said was that it had something to do with Serbia.”
“Serbia?”
“Yes, that’s all.”
“It’s not much to go on,” Carl told her.
“You have her addresses in Bangkok. There will be plenty for you to find out because she made a lot of noise everywhere. She always did. You can find her enemy, I know you can.”
“Alright, I’d better leave it there. My head is spinning,” Carl told her, getting up from the chair.
“You are really going back to Bangkok, with all the legal problems you have there?” Maria asked him.
Carl hovered between the chair, and the door then turned back to her and said, “It seems we have all let Nadia down at some time or other, and somebody has to stand up for her now she’s dead.”
“Yes, perhaps you are right. Will you please keep me informed, let me know what happens?”
“Yes, of course, and if you think of anything that might be useful, you can always reach me at the Sukhumvit Grande hotel. Just ask for Carl Engel, and they’ll know how to find me.”
CHAPTER 20
“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”
– L. P. Hartley
Carl pushed through the curtain of heat and humidity that tells passengers they have arrived in Bangkok, and impatient, set off on a brisk walk. Upsetting the colonel by landing him in hot water with HQ meant Carl couldn’t call him to check if he was officially a wanted man yet. So, the possibility of being dragged away in handcuffs weighed heavily as he approached the long queue outside the arrivals hall. Shuffling forward, passport in hand, he imagined all the bad things that could happen. It was only thirty minutes, but it felt much longer.
Once in front of the grumpy, uniformed man with the rubber stamp, Carl stood on the white line, as instructed, handed over his passport, and waited for his photograph to be taken by a device like an eye on a stick. Feeling relief he wasn’t flagged by the computer at the immigration booth, he collected his suitcase from the carousel and took an airport limousine to the Sukhumvit Grande Hotel. As cosy a place as any when you are homeless and wanted for a capital crime.
After checking in to the hotel, he grabbed a stack of newspapers, retrieved his other suitcase from the concierge, and went up to the room. Lying on the bed, he perused the papers. Nadia’s case was not there, the previous week’s headlines abandoned for more recent scandals. Yesterday’s dead are quickly forgotten. He called Bart Barrows who answered his mobile on the third ring. “Thought you wouldn’t be coming back. Nobody in his right mind would’ve come back,” Bart told him. The background noise was a bar.
“Tell me about Serbian criminal activity in Thailand. What’s in your file?” Carl asked him.
“What have you been smoking? I have no idea what you are talking about.” Bart had dropped his good ol’ boy cover and changed his accent. He was talking like a man in a suit. Carl had been fishing, and he’d got a bite.
“Come on Bart, I know you people have got files on everything.”
“Come to the Two Ladies, we need to talk,” Bart barked at him, and hung up.
Carl called room service, and then called George and told him he was back. He unpacked his suitcase, hung his clothes in the closet, laid out the pipe, tobacco tin, leather pouch, knife, and pipe cleaners on the desk, sat in the chair and proceeded to clean the pipe. Other private detectives sat at their desks and cleaned their guns, but when Carl sat at his desk, he preferred to clean his Dunhill Zulu pipe.
Showered, shaved, clean pipe in his pocket, and after a sandwich from room service, Carl went to the Two Ladies to find an impatient Bart Barrows on his third beer. Carl sat down beside him and ordered a soda water.
“You took your time,” Bart told him signalling the bartender for another bottle of beer.
“Tell me about the Serbians,” Carl asked him.
“What makes you think you can ask me for help all the time? We’re the goddamn government, not associate gumshoes.”
“That’s easy Bart, you help me because you’re not half as big an arsehole as you pretend to be. It pisses you off that your government behaves like an oil company, and that they do business with terrorists. Helping me is your way of throwing a spanner in the works. You enjoy it, that’s why you help me.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you have a vivid imagination?”
“No, Bart, you’re the first. So, what do you say?”
“I say you should leave this one alone, they’re out of your league; terrorists, violent rock n’ rollers, not one of your pretty Mozart concertos, Carl.”
“What do you mean by terrorists? What do they believe in?” Carl asked.
“Believe in? Nothing, of course, we’re talking nihilists with a pinch of nationalism dropped in the soup to hide real intent, the usual bullshit. Just a bunch of violent rednecks whining they were fucked over during the war.”
“I thought they were fucked over, didn’t your lords and masters set them up as the bogeymen so Wall Street could take Yugoslavia apart like a clock?” Carl said.
“Why do you always have to talk like a leftie?”
“Because if I moved to where the right is nowadays, I’d have to learn to dance the goose-step.”
“Did anybody ever tell you, you’re an asshole?”
“Eventually, everybody does,” Carl replied.
“Order a real drink, and I’ll tell you what you want to know,” Bart told him, so Carl ordered the same beer Bart was drinking and waited for him to speak.
“Like most extremist groups, this bunch didn’t know much about politics, so they took up crime instead; something they were actually good at. They deal in the usual shit: drugs, gambling, extortion, human trafficking, and fake passports, all under the flag of fake idealism. They launder their money and live like kings here. Thailand is paradise to such people so, of course, they’re all here now.”
“Dangerous?”
“No Carl, if you piss them off they just make you stand in the corner with a dunce’s hat on.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Yeah, that damn bad,” Bart told him, “and then they go to work on you with hammers and electric drills.
“Charming fuckers, by the sound of it. I assume they’re all in their fifties and sixties,” Carl said.
“Mostly around that, how did you know?”
“They’d have to be to come out of that wa
r, and I imagine that’s where they learned such dirty tricks.”
“That’s about right. These guys are bad, really bad. You’ll stay away from them if you know what’s good for you.”
“That may not be possible, but thanks for the advice.”
“I’m serious, be careful. These aren’t your nice serial killers, Carl; they don’t just kill women. I’m talking about hardened war criminals. They’ll cut you into little pieces as soon as look at you.”
“So, how do I find them?” Carl asked.
“You’re a goddamn lunatic.”
“So, what else is new?”
“Anyway, you’ve already found them,” Bart told him. “Their leader is posing as a Hungarian businessman, and I hear you’ve already trodden on that nest. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re not already looking for you.”
“Thanks, Bart, I owe you.”
“Yeah, you do, as usual. I suppose telling you to drop this will be a waste of spit.”
“It will,” Carl told him, then paid his bill and left without finishing his beer.
CHAPTER 21
“I don’t think through anything I do. I just do it, and it’s oftentimes landed me in huge amounts of trouble.”
– James Gunn
“Nadia Bajic? No, she not here,” said the Thai-Chinese building manager, his head sticking out of the small window of the front office. Carl was standing in the lobby of a rundown apartment building, not far from his hotel. The head sticking out of the office window had the wrinkled face of an ancient, but with a full head of hair in a pudding bowl hairstyle, dyed jet-black. Too black by far, and very obviously dyed, as if dipped in shoe polish. Carl held up Nadia’s photograph, but the old man just shook his head.
“Are you sure?” Carl asked him. “She would have stayed here a little over a year ago.”
“Many Russian girls here, and nobody use real name,” he told Carl.
“Do you have many here now?”
“Yes, a lot,” the man said, “They work night, so all upstairs and sleep now.”
“What kind of work do they do?” Carl asked.
“Russian dancing,” the old man said with a sarcastic grin.
“Do you know where?”
“All work in same place - nightclub Bomba.”
“And this woman,” Carl asked, holding up the photo of Nadia.
“Don’t know,” the old Thai-Chinese man said.
“But she did stay here, a little over a year ago,” Carl insisted.
The man shrugged his shoulders and said, “I not even know girls stay here now.”
“You don’t see them coming and going?”
“All look same-same to me,” he said, shrugging his shoulders again.
“What about their mail?”
“Russian letters I put on table, over there, and girls take. Why you want this girl?”
“She’s a Russian heiress, and she has just inherited a great fortune,” Carl told him. “I need to find her so I can give money to her.”
“Wow,” the old man exclaimed, “even dancers rich in your country? You so lucky.”
“Funny thing, but that’s my name, it’s Mr Lucky.” Carl scribbled the word ‘Lucky’ on a scrap of paper with his phone number underneath, and handed it to the man. “If you remember anything, call this number and ask for Lucky. There’s a five thousand baht reward.”
The man folded the paper and put it carefully in his wallet like it was a lottery ticket that he didn’t want to lose. Carl left the man with his face screwed up in concentration because now he wanted to remember Nadia.
It was too early to go to Bomba, so Carl went back to the hotel and sat by the pool. As he lay in the sun, he took stock of his situation: he had been living with a Serbian prostitute pretending to be a Russian prostitute, and he was probably the only person in the whole of Thailand who didn’t know she was a prostitute. Add to that, pretty much everybody in Thailand was convinced he’d murdered her. Could it get any worse? It probably could, because now he couldn’t stop thinking about Maria. It was undeniable that, instead of grieving over his dead, pregnant girlfriend, he was mostly thinking about screwing her sister, and he couldn’t deny these were not exactly noble thoughts. You’d better pull yourself together, he thought, and then he spotted two South African Airways air hostesses frolicking at the shallow end of the pool, and his mood immediately improved.
Carl and George walked into Bomba shortly after it opened at nine o’clock. It was plusher than the Thai bars they usually went to. The sofas were covered in red velvet, and the mirrored ceiling was adorned with spinning disco lights. At the centre was a stage with poles for the dancers to shimmy up and down, and two athletic women were clinging on to them for dear life and giving it their best. After three more songs from the days of disco, the two dancers left the stage, and another two walked on and started dancing in their place.
One of the dancers that left the floor came to where Carl and George were sitting, looking for tips, and whispering the offer of a lap dance in the back room. Carl gave her a hundred baht tip, and then showed her a photograph of Nadia and asked if she recognised her.
“Questions, why you ask me questions?” she snarled.
The other dancer approached George and asked, “What’s wrong with your friend? He want to make trouble?” Then she looked at the picture in Carl’s hand and started speaking Russian to the first dancer. Carl heard the name Nadia amongst the Russian words.
“Yes, that’s right, Nadia,” he told the second dancer.
“So, what you want from her?” the second dancer asked.
“I want to know whatever you can tell me about her.”
“She’s not interested, so you go away. She quit, doesn’t work anymore. She’s happy now, going to have a baby, so pick another girl. This one very nice,” she said and pointed at the other dancer.
“How do you know she’s pregnant?” Carl asked her.
“What you ask me questions for? I told you she doesn’t work here anymore.”
“Nadia’s dead,” he told her. “Somebody smacked her around and then put a bullet in her head.”
“You’re lying! She’s not dead because I spoke to her a week ago. She’s happy, and she’s having a baby.”
“I am afraid she really is dead. I know, because I saw the body,” Carl said.
Two men that had been sitting at the small bar beside a red curtain with a sign above it saying Private Rooms came over and started speaking to the two dancers in Russian. Then the men turned towards Carl and George and told them to leave. Carl ignored them and asked the second dancer if she would sit down and talk to him. By now George had stood up, and one of the heavies put his hand out to grab him. George gently slapped his hand away. Every time the heavy put one of his hands out to grab George, it was hit away. The grabbing got faster and so did the slapping until it became silly, but still, the heavy couldn’t get a hand on George. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t grab hold, and he was getting more and more angry about it.
The heavy in front of Carl said, “Tell old man,” referring to George, “if he doesn’t stop his games, my friend will have to hurt him.”
“You’d better take a good look at that old man,” Carl told him, “he’s only playing now, but if your friend keeps this up he’ll get bored, and then it will be over in an instant.”
Carl’s Russian heavy said something to his friend, and he charged at George. This was a mistake, and George took advantage of the man’s momentum letting him pass like a matador would a bull, then George was behind him, and it was game over, and the next thing the heavy saw was George’s open palm, just before his lights went out. The Russian thug went down and landed hard, curled up on the floor unconscious.
“There’s plenty more where that came from,” Carl told the man standing in front of him. “That old man can knock people down all night.”
The Russian walked off and went behind the red curtain.
“He’s gone to call police,” th
e second dancer said with urgency. “Police get money from boss, and they hurt customers who make trouble.”
“Thank you,” Carl told her. And then he turned to George and said, “Come on old man, grab your Zimmer frame and follow me.”
The dancer stopped him, and said, “Quick please, give me your phone.”
He took it from his pocket and handed it to her. She hurriedly entered a number and pressed send. “You call me tomorrow,” she said, as she gave it back to him. “Now go,” she told him, and then she walked off to hustle tips from another table.
CHAPTER 22
“A chatterbox is a treasure for a spy.”
– Russian Proverb
Carl waited until the following afternoon to call the dancer. He figured that with Bomba being open until four in the morning, he wouldn’t get anything out of her until after lunch, and he was right because when he called her at two, she didn’t answer. She finally picked up the phone just before four o’clock.
“Hello, oh, it’s you,” she mumbled, still half asleep, “we meet in Castro’s,” and then she hung up.
Castro’s was a Cuban pub, recently opened, and not far from the hotel, so Carl walked there. The walls were covered in black and white pictures of Cuban revolutionaries. The waitresses wore the green uniform of the revolution, and in the toilets, they played Fidel’s speeches loudly through speakers. The special of the day was the Che Guevara burger, and mojitos served in giant jugs. Castro’s was a popular theme pub with one purpose, to get young people fucked up on rum, but Carl wasn’t young, so he ordered a cup of coffee, and then another because the dancer was late. He should have known it would take an hour for her to get dressed and put her face on.
The dancer came through the door and spotted Carl sitting alone. She looked more relaxed than the night before, except for a bruise on her left cheek that even her heavy make-up couldn’t hide. “What happened to you?” he asked her as she sat down.
“After you leave, Sergey very angry,” she told him.
“Which one was Sergey? The one on the floor?”
