A Farewell to Paradise

by Harlan Wolff

  Carl smiled at her and ordered the Gevrey-Chambertin. The food was excellent, and the Burgundy was even better. It turned out they shared a fondness for Puccini operas and the writer, Albert Camus. Maria was pleasant company when she wasn’t angry with him, and Carl decided he could get used to civilised dinners with an intelligent and beautiful woman. But mostly, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. He watched her lips move as she talked, and her breasts rising and falling as she breathed. Whatever she was doing to him, he wished it would stop. She was the one in control, and he wasn’t sure he liked that.

  “Look’” she said, after the meal, when the Armagnac arrived, “I do like you, it’s just the circumstances we find ourselves in.”

  “I know,” he told her, smiling, “and anyway, my ribs are killing me.”

  “That’s a relief,” she said and shot him a look he hadn’t seen before.

  They woke up at noon, the following day, in Maria’s bed. They had been up most of the night, making love and then talking for hours, and then making love again. Whereas Nadia had been highly skilled in bed, her sister was all passion. It was like being pulled into a warm, soft, dark place that made the world outside irrelevant.

  Maria called room service and asked them to send up a pot of coffee for two. “I’m going back to Vienna,” she told him as soon as she’d put the phone down. “The funeral’s over, and I have a job and a life waiting for me.”

  “When are you going?”

  “I thought today would be as good a time as any,” she said.

  “I’d like you to stay a few days,” Carl told her.

  “That’s not a good idea,” she said. “I was hoping we wouldn’t do this until everything was over and done with. How will it look when people realise I’m sleeping with the man accused of murdering my sister?”

  “I’ll take you to the airport,” Carl said.

  “When you’ve done whatever it is you have to do, come and stay with me in Vienna. We could get to know each other better, and then, well, we can take it from there.”

  “I’d like that,” Carl told her.

  “Don’t take too long,” she told him.

  “I won’t,” Carl assured her.

  Room service arrived with two cups and a hot pot of coffee on a tray, but they made love again and drank the coffee lukewarm.

  “I’d better take a shower and pack,” she said.

  “And I’d better go to my room and change my clothes,” Carl said.

  The departure hall of Bangkok airport was crowded, and Carl remembered it had been a long time since he’d said goodbye to anyone there. It was decades since he had last waved someone off, like a lovesick fool. Maria clung to him in front of the entrance to the departure lounge and kissed him for a long time, then she turned and walked away. He had no doubt he was going to miss the smell of wildflowers and heather.

  CHAPTER 34

  “You got to look on the bright side, even if there ain’t one.”

  – Dashiell Hammett

  The colonel appeared pleased with himself. It was eleven o’clock in the morning, and he stood, in full uniform, by the desk in Carl’s hotel room taking papers out of an envelope and spreading them out on the desktop. Carl was leaning over the desk, peering at the documents through reading glasses perched on the end of his nose. George sat quietly at the foot of the bed and listened. As a boy, he had been given a book about a lion tamer with Ringling Brothers Circus, and he made sure he never got between Carl and the colonel.

  The first documents the colonel pointed to were passport copies from a hotel in Trang. “This is Scarface, and this is the man that checked in with him,” Colonel Pornchai said.

  “That’s quite a scar,” Carl said, lifting the paper off the desk for a better look at the passport photo.

  “It makes him easy to identify,” the colonel said.

  “There’s no hiding that ugly face,” Carl said.

  “That’s him for sure,” the colonel said as he proudly handed Carl another bunch of papers. “This is him and his accomplice arriving in Thailand.”

  The documents were printouts from the immigration computer, and the attached pages were photos of the two men taken by the camera on the kiosk, where entry visas were stamped in travellers’ passports on arrival.

  Carl studied the first sheet and said, “So they arrived the day before she was killed?”

  “That’s correct,” the colonel said, “and here is their departure the day after she died.”

  Carl took the papers from the colonel’s hand and saw another computer printout and another pair of photo images, and he wasn’t pleased. “They caught a flight out, the day after they killed her?” Carl mumbled.

  “That’s right,” the colonel told him, “they caught the early flight to Helsinki.”

  “Shit,” Carl muttered.

  “They will be back in Serbia by now, so the investigation is over,” the colonel said.

  “Shit,” Carl said more loudly.

  “If you show what you have to the police, will they stop looking at Carl for the murder?” George asked.

  “Their theory will be that Carl hired the Serbians, so they’ll still try and make a case against him,” the colonel said.

  “It may even strengthen their case,” Carl said, and the colonel nodded in agreement.

  “Shit,” said George.

  “They’ll lose in court though because they don’t have any evidence,” the colonel said. “I will help with that, and you know Anand’s a good lawyer.”

  “But it will take years,” Carl said.

  The colonel just shrugged his shoulders. Such things were daily life to him, and, like Anand, he didn’t share Carl’s abhorrence of the legal bureaucracy. What were years? The colonel had lived in the belly of the beast for decades.

  “Is there anything that can be done?” George asked.

  “Sure, George,” the colonel told him, “I know people in the prosecutor’s office, everybody just needs to be patient. These things just take a little time.”

  “Did you give him the watch yet?” Carl asked.

  “Not yet, I have to go there myself,” the colonel snarled. It was never wise to remind him he hadn’t done what he’d already been paid to do.

  “We need to know he’s on our side,” Carl said.

  “When the time is right,” the colonel told him. Angry he was being treated like he was accountable for the promises he’d made.

  “When will that be?” Carl asked.

  “If you don’t trust me, then find someone else to help you,” the colonel moaned.

  This was a threat to go on strike. He always went on strike when asked to account for the money he’d received. Carl didn’t want another tantrum, followed by a walkout, so he chose his words carefully.

  “Of course I trust you,” Carl told him, “I’m just asking when you’re going to talk to him?”

  “When the major finishes his case and sends the file upstairs to the inspector, then I will see a copy of the file before it is sent to the prosecutor and know what can be done.”

  “What about fixing the file before it goes upstairs?”

  “Can’t be done. The major thinks he’s the godfather down there because he works for the underground casino and earns lots of money. He wants to be famous for putting you in prison. For him, this case isn’t about money. But he’s not a good policeman, and I expect his casework to be sloppy. Like Napoleon said, don’t interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake. We let him prepare his file then, when it goes upstairs, I point out the weaknesses in it to the prosecutor’s office.”

  “I thought the prosecutor was the major’s brother-in-law,” Carl said.

  “Fortunately, his brother in law doesn’t work for the casino, so he will take our money,” the colonel said, not surprised Carl already knew about the brother-in-law.

  “That’s good to hear,” Carl said, “let me know how much you need.”

  “I will,” the colonel told him.

&
nbsp; The promise of more money would make the colonel forget the insult of being asked what he did with the last payment. Money was the only way Carl had to fight the system, and he knew it wasn’t going to be cheap this time around. The nightclub was losing money, and it had been over a year since they’d worked a case together. That meant the colonel was struggling to put petrol in the tank of his Mercedes, and his wives and mistresses weren’t getting gifts; and when Josephine wasn’t happy, even Napoleon had to sleep on the sofa. No, it definitely wasn’t going to be cheap this time, because the colonel needed the money, and he was planning to fill his boots.

  Carl’s visa would be up in another month, and, if the case went to court, visa extensions would only be granted until his next court date. That would mean after a mad rush to post bail, he would have to beg for his passport from a desk in the court building, rush it over to immigration to grovel for a visa stamp, then have to get the passport back to the court before his cash guarantee expired. This race against the machine would be required every time the judge banged his gavel and announced a new date to appear in court. Any slip-up or delay would result in spending time behind bars. A Thai citizen would just post bail and go home, but a foreigner’s legal problems were far more complicated. Carl would pay a lot to stop the case reaching court, and the colonel was counting on it.

  “Don’t worry,” the colonel said, smiling, “I won’t let you go to jail, that would be a lousy advertisement for our services.”

  “It would,” Carl said.

  “You need to get drunk,” the colonel told him. “We should go out. I am tied up tonight, but tomorrow is good.”

  “Sure,” Carl told him, “like the old days.”

  “I’ll pick you up tomorrow.”

  He would pick Carl up in front of the hotel. The colonel never let the drinking and driving laws interfere with his social life. He drove his Mercedes everywhere, regardless. It was not unusual for the doormen at his nightclub to help him to his car at closing time. A night out with the colonel was always a big one.

  CHAPTER 35

  “The perils of duck hunting are great - especially for the duck.”

  – Walter Cronkite

  Carl spent the afternoon writing a report on his cast of characters and suspects. The colonel’s documents from the morning were attached, and the email went out to Carl’s man in Bratislava at five o’clock. The email was addressed to Gregor Bosko, a private investigator covering Eastern Europe. They had met some years before on a case Carl had flown to Slovakia for and, after winding up the investigation, they watched the World Cup final together in Bratislava’s Old Town. After Brazil’s second goal and on their second bottle of slivovitz, the two men had hit it off, and become friends. Since then, Gregor had been in charge of several investigations and had always handled himself with integrity and professionalism. Carl needed him now.

  Shortly after the email went out, Carl received a message on his phone’s encrypted Telegram app. Gregor always used Telegram to message and telephone Carl. He’d once read the Russians wanted to ban it because they couldn’t hack it, and if the Russians didn’t like it, then Gregor wanted it. The message said: Fucking Serbia? I hate going to fucking Serbia! Alright, I’m on it.

  Carl messaged back: I know you can do this, but be careful. Dangerous men. Possibly war criminals.

  Knowing he was in good hands, Carl’s mood improved, and he decided to take the rest of the day off. He was thinking of Maria, and he needed to clear his head. When the present got complicated, it was usual for Carl to visit his past, so he went to see his old friend, the Dutchman.

  The Dutchman, moustachioed, bald, antique dealer and old Asia hand, was at home, wearing beads and a Hawaiian shirt, sitting amongst piles of dirty Tibetan carpets, listening to Thelonious Monk on vinyl. As always, he had a spliff in his hand and a go-go dancer in his bedroom. Before he had made his living from the crimes of others, Carl and the Dutchman had dabbled in smuggling rubies from India to Thailand. They were old friends.

  “So, let’s see if I’ve got this right: your pregnant girlfriend was murdered by Serbian hitmen, and you are the only suspect as far as the local police are concerned. And, if that’s not enough of a mess, now you’re fucking the victim’s sister, and besotted by her by the sound of it,” the Dutchman said, puffing on the joint.

  “That sounds about right,” Carl told him, as he took a puff from the spliff in his own hand.

  “That’s fucked up,” the Dutchman told him grinning serenely.

  “It is, isn’t it,” Carl said with a severe case of the ganja giggles.

  “You could get life in prison, or worse,” the Dutchman told him.

  “Worse?” Carl asked.

  “Marriage to a European woman,” the Dutchman told him. “True fascism, blessed by the church.”

  “I could,” Carl said, escalating from silly giggles to laughing out loud.

  The go-go dancer came out of the bedroom wearing a man’s flowery shirt as a nightgown and sat beside the antique dealer. “What’s so funny?” she asked. The two men looked at each other and started laughing again. The go-go dancer looked at the spinning vinyl record with stern disapproval, it was not her kind of music. She got up from the sofa and went back into the bedroom. If they were going to be silly, she was going back to sleep. She was already on the clock and would earn just as much on her back with her eyes closed as she would if she stayed awake.

  “What does George say?”

  “I haven’t told him I’m sleeping with the sister yet,” Carl said and took another puff.

  “That’s pretty fucked up,” the Dutchman said.

  “It is what it is,” Carl said.

  “What’s she like?”

  “The sister?”

  “Yeah, what’s she like?”

  Carl thought for a moment, and then he said, “Like a librarian with Marilyn Monroe’s body and tortoiseshell glasses.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wow, she’s your type on steroids.”

  “Isn’t she just,” Carl said.

  “The worst thing that can happen to a man is to meet his perfect woman. I wouldn’t wish that on anybody,” the Dutchman said.

  “Me too,” Carl agreed.

  “And she’s the sister of your murdered girlfriend, and everybody thinks you did it.”

  “Not everybody. She doesn’t think I did it,” Carl said.

  “Well, at least you’ve got that going for you, that’s nice.”

  “It’s a fucking start,” Carl said, and they both started giggling again.

  “Are you going to be alright?”

  “Fucked if I know,” Carl said and started laughing out loud again.

  “And the dead woman, she worked for this Milos character?”

  “Yes,” Carl said.

  “And in her spare time, she was a prostitute who blackmailed her clients?”

  “Seems like it,” Carl said.

  “And she made a big enough score to pack it all in and retire?”

  “That’s the story,” Carl said.

  “Your taste in women hasn’t improved then,” the Dutchman said and passed him another spliff.

  “I was never into go-go dancers much,” Carl said.

  “None of mine ever blackmailed me,” the Dutchman said.

  “True,” Carl said. “Very true.”

  After Thelonious Monk, the Dutchman played some Dexter Gordon, followed by Miles Davis, then some more Monk. They drank beer, smoked joints, and talked of old times, and dead friends. It turned into a good distraction, just what the doctor ordered. Carl staggered from the Dutchman’s house completely wasted, and meandered along the pavement, hoping for a taxi to show up.

  He was in the back of a taxi heading to the hotel when his phone rang. It was close to midnight, and he couldn’t be bothered to fumble around for his reading classes, so he answered without seeing the caller’s name.

  “It’s Carl,” he slurred into the devi
ce.

  “Are you alright?” It was Maria’s voice, and it was early evening in Vienna.

  “Sure, I’m fine, it’s just late here,” Carl said.

  “Did I disturb you?” she asked.

  “No, not at all, I’m in a taxi on the way to the hotel.”

  “You sound drunk,” she said.

  “I’m stoned,” he told her and was relieved to hear her laugh.

  “I was just calling to see how you were doing and to say goodnight. Are you alright?”

  “I am now, he said.”

  “Get some sleep, and we can talk tomorrow,” she told him.

  “You too,” he told her, forgetting it wasn’t even 7pm yet in Austria.

  CHAPTER 36

  “The difference between a murderer and myself is only that I choose not to do it. But I’m capable.”

  – Nick Nolte

  Colonel Pornchai picked Carl up at the hotel an hour later than promised, at 10pm. After driving the Mercedes through the Bangkok traffic like it was a tank in a race to be the first crossing the Rhine, he pulled up in an alleyway outside a recently opened whisky bar that Carl had heard about but never been to.

  Outside, above the wooden door, was a bright neon sign saying, Whisky Alley. Once inside, Carl found a short bar with a dozen bar stools. Size wise it was a hole in the wall, but it was grand in appearance, with a crystal chandelier and engraved mirrors. There was no room for chairs and tables, and full capacity was a dozen customers, but fortunately, there were only seven bar stools occupied. The wall behind the bar was full of rare bottles of whisky. Carl sat down beside the colonel and decided he liked the place.

  “I’ve got my own bottle here,” the colonel told him. “I hope you like Glenmorangie.”

  “A decent highland malt,” Carl told him, although he much preferred the smoky Islay ones.

  A bartender in a shiny waistcoat placed an almost full bottle of Glenmorangie on the bar, with two crystal glasses. Then he brought an ice bucket and two bottles of soda water. The colonel mixed soda water with everything. Carl watched the bartender mix and stir the two drinks, but he didn’t say a word. It seemed, even highland single malt whisky had to adapt to life in the tropics. When the bottle was put back on the bar, Carl spotted a supermarket price sticker. So that was his game, Carl thought, the colonel buys a bottle at the local supermarket, and the bar keeps it behind the bar for him and gives him free ice and soda; no wonder he likes this place.