by R. J. Jagger
THEN I DID SOMETHING STUPID. I WALKED OVER TO HIM AND SLAPPED HIS FACE AS HARD AS I COULD. HE COILED BACK AND RAISED HIS HAND TO HIT ME. I SAID, YOU LOOK AT ME WHEN I LOOK AT YOU!
HE HAD ONE WORD FOR THAT.
BITCH!
HE CALLED ME A BITCH BUT I DIDN’T CARE, BECAUSE HE NOW KNEW THAT I EXISTED. THEN HE DID SOMETHING I DIDN’T EXPECT. HE PICKED ME UP AND THREW ME OVER HIS SHOULDERS LIKE A SACK OF POTATOES. HE STORMED DOWN INTO HIS CABIN AND RIPPED MY CLOTHES OFF. THEN HE TOOK ME, HARD, LIKE AN ANIMAL. I RESISTED BUT IT DID NO GOOD. BY THE TIME IT WAS OVER HE HAD TAMED ME, BUT TAME IS A TWO-WAY STREET. NO ONE CAN TAME ANOTHER WITHOUT IN SOME WAY BEING TAMED BACK IN RETURN. WHEN HE LOOKED AT ME, AFTER THE FACT, IT WAS THERE IN HIS EYES. HIS LIFE HAD CHANGED AS MUCH AS MINE. WE WERE DESTINED FOR EACH OTHER AND KNEW IT.
Kanjana looked up and asked, “Have you ever heard of Shi Xianggu?”
Prarie shook her head.
“She ended up being one of the most notorious pirates in the history of Asia,” Kanjana said. “You must be descended from her, if you have her journal.”
“You think?”
Yes.
She did.
“There’s a touch of Asian in your eyes,” Kanjana said. “Now you know where it comes from.”
Prarie considered it.
Then said, “It’s ironic that she was a prostitute at age seventeen and so was I.”
Kanjana leaned back and studied the woman.
“I wonder how much of her is in your genes.”
8
Day Two—August 14
Tuesday Morning
DECK OWNED A FOUR-STORY BUILDING next to an abandoned steel mill on the east outskirts of Bangkok. Back in its heyday it housed a toy manufacturing company. Now it only housed him. He lived on the top floor in a 5,000 square foot space that he called the loft. The space was just that, space, meaning one large rectangular room with bamboo plank floors and a fourteen foot ceiling. There was only one enclosed area, for the darkroom.
Other than that there were no walls.
Not a one.
Not for the bedroom, or the bathroom, or even the area where the models changed. Of course, he kept a few partitions on rollers around for the faint of heart—one by the toilet and one where the models dressed.
At six-five, 245 pounds the space fit his frame just fine.
Anything smaller would be a cage.
The west windows looked down on weed-infested track and the tops of broken gondolas that had once been used to haul scrap steel for offloading into the electric arc furnace.
He pushed his naked body off the mattress at the usual time, 10:00 a.m., got the coffee machine going and jumped in the shower, soaking the thick blond mane of hair that hung halfway down his back, a good twelve to eighteen inches past his shoulders. He lathered his face with soap and shaved under the spray. Then he did the same with his balls and dick, getting rid of every hair, so Chayada wouldn’t be fighting with distractions when she went down to visit.
He toweled off in front of the mirror.
A warrior stared back.
A green-eyed warrior.
All muscle.
Ripped.
His skin was bronzed but from the sun, not because he had Thai in his blood.
WITH A CUP OF COFFEE IN HAND, he checked his messages and found twelve. One turned out to be from Kwakki, the VP of Three Streets, which was one of the top ten ad agencies in Asia, headquartered in Hong Kong. He dialed Kwakki’s direct number and got him just before he headed out the door.
“What’s this message you left about a new project? How am I supposed to spend my life getting laid if you keep cluttering it up with work?” Deck asked.
Kwakki laughed.
“Here’s the deal,” he said, “and let me tell you right off the bat, this is huge. The client’s Sensory Perceptions. In four months they’re going to roll out a cologne called Snare, the target market being males between twenty and thirty. They want a seriously edgy image for the product. Whoever wears it is a dangerous bad-boy, that kind of thing. And who does edgy better than you?”
Deck grinned.
“No one.”
“Exactly,” Kwakki said. “No one. I need you to work up some outrageous concepts for them to look at. The ones they finally choose are going to be everywhere, as in across Asia, on billboards, buses, magazines, the whole bit. They’re going to throw seriously-stupid money at it.”
“So exactly how much of an edge are they looking for?”
“An edge that’s fallen over the edge,” Kwakki said. “The idea is that whoever wears this stuff attracts the most beautiful and dangerous women on the planet. Picture one guy surrounded by five barely-dressed women in heat.”
Deck winced.
“Trite,” he said. “How soon do they need it?”
“Two weeks, two and a half max.”
Fine.
Doable.
“Later today I’m going to wire you seed money,” Kwakki said. “Just be sure to give me something fresh, something no one’s even thought of before, much less seen.”
“I already have some ideas,” Deck said.
AFTER HE HUNG UP, Deck sat down at the drums, put “Sweet Child of Mine,” on repeat mode, cranked up the volume and played along. A half hour later he had several pretty good ideas for photo shoots.
Then he worked the phone to get things in motion.
Models.
Costumes.
Setting.
Lighting.
An hour later Chayada called. He pulled up a picture of exotic hazel eyes and a sensuous curvy body, a picture so vivid that his cock tingled.
She had news.
Very interesting news.
9
Day 2—August 14
Tuesday Morning
THE ROYAL THAI POLICE HEADQUARTERS turned out to be a large, integrated complex of fifteen or twenty buildings located on Rama 1 Road in central Bangkok. Teffinger took a cab there Tuesday morning, eventually found the Criminal Investigation Bureau and got escorted to the fifth floor to meet with detective Jinka Sanaveenin, who was pacing and talking animatedly into a phone when he walked in.
She wasn’t anything like what he expected.
Exotic would be the best word to describe her.
Either that or dangerous.
Her hair was almost identical to Teffinger’s, pitch-black, straight and halfway down her back. Her face reminded him of a Polynesian island girl, light brown in color with hypnotic hazel eyes, the kind of face that sailor’s killed for. She was younger than him by four or five years. Both of her wrists had tattoos, some kind of Thai writing. A third tattoo—a dark blue tribal band—wrapped around her right ankle. That’s all that showed, but Teffinger pictured more under her clothes. She wore a short-sleeve white shirt tucked into a black skirt that rode three inches above her knees.
She was taller than most, about five-seven.
No rings on her fingers.
In another time and place, Teffinger would have swum across a lagoon of poisonous snakes just to kiss her neck. But pleasures like that were no longer part of his life. Nothing in his life was part of his life any longer.
SHE HUNG UP, looked at her watch and said in English, “You’re late.”
He liked the sound of her voice.
Very sensual.
Very melodic.
“Two hours late,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
She studied him, then softened and said, “I have to do a response. If you still want to talk about the Aspen Leigh case, you can come with me and we’ll do it on the way.”
“Great.”
His eyes fell to a coffee pot, half full, sitting on a credenza. Jinka followed his gaze, then filled a disposable cup and handed it to him.
“You’re an addict,” she said. “I like that.”
Teffinger smiled.
“Are you one too? An addict—“
She nodded.
“Yes, but not coffee—other things.”
<
br /> Teffinger almost pressed it but decided it would be safer not to. Instead he pointed to her wrist and said, “What’s that say?”
She held up both her wrists, wiggled the left one and said, “This one says light.” She wiggled the other one and said, “This one says dark. It’s a reminder that there’s light and dark in each of us. None of us is a hundred percent one or the other. We’re all somewhere between them.” A beat, then, “The missing woman, Aspen Leigh, is she your girlfriend?”
No.
She wasn’t.
“She’s just a friend,” he said.
“You came halfway around the world to find someone who’s just a friend?”
“Well, she’s just a friend, but she’s also the sister of someone else who is also a friend,” he said.
“Who?”
“Jena Leigh,” Teffinger said. “Growing up in high school, my best friend was Matt Leigh. He had a ticklish, tomboy sister three years younger than us, who is Jena. We kind of had a crush on each other but nothing ever happened, with her being three years younger and all. We’d wrestle every once in a while, but that was about it. Aspen is the younger sister of Matt and Jena, six years younger than me. I hardly paid any attention to her back in the day, but as we both got older we developed something of a relationship and go about getting each other drunk even now and then.”
“Did you ever sleep with her?”
“No.”
“Jena?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It just never happened.”
She studied him.
“In hindsight, you’re sorry it didn’t. I can tell.”
“Maybe,” Teffinger said.
She topped off his coffee cup.
Then headed for the door and said, “The worse things in life are regrets. When I die, I’m not going to have any. That’s how I live my life. Come on, let’s go, I have a woman waiting for me. Good thing you’re used to gruesome scenes because some sicko tied her to a bed and stabbed her in the chest about a hundred times.”
10
Day 2—August 14
Tuesday Morning
TUESDAY MORNING, WING AND JAMAICA boarded the first aircraft to Bangkok and spent most of the flight logged onto the net pulling up websites that related to the history of the Monet paintings at issue.
Wing ordered an orange juice.
The flight attendant brought him one, about half the size of what he expected.
He drank it in one long gulp.
“The museum’s reward isn’t anywhere near what the paintings are worth,” he said. “That reward was low to start with and is ten years old. The paintings are worth fifty times that, maybe a hundred.”
Jamaica shrugged.
She didn’t know.
She didn’t care.
“The object was never so much to get the money as to get the paintings back in the public domain where they belonged,” she said. “The reward was just sort of an additional bonus, at least from my point of view. It might have been a bigger bonus from Syling’s point of view.”
“I understand that,” Wing said. “My point is that whoever is after these things has a lot of motivation. You still don’t have any idea who they are?”
No.
She didn’t.
“Maybe they were someone getting ready to steal them, except me and Syling got there first,” she said. “Maybe they’re Kong’s friends. Maybe they’re his enemies. They could be anybody. The only thing I know for sure is that they saw my face, crystal clear.”
Right.
Crystal.
WING LEANED OVER, CLOSE, and said, “I want to tell you something that I’ve never told anyone. All this music video stuff I’m doing, it’s paying the bills and making me smile, don’t get me wrong, but it’s also making my feet grow cold. I’m ready to move on to bigger things. I’ve been ready, in fact, for at least two years. It’s like there’s a volcano building up inside me, getting closer and closer to busting.”
“What kind of bigger things?”
“Movies,” Wing said. “I’m talking about producing and directing full length, state-of-the-art feature films with the top stars, the best scripts and special effects that the world has never even envisioned, much less seen.”
She pictured it.
And linked her arm through his.
“Cool.”
Yes.
Right.
Cool.
Good word for it.
“I have a lot of contacts in place, but nowhere near what I need,” he said. “That kind of thing isn’t possible until everyone in the industry starts to see me as a serious player. That in turn won’t happen until I get some serious financing in place. Right now, if I liquidated all my assets and pooled everything I have, I might be able to produce one medium-sized film. Maybe that’s the place to start, but I don’t want to start there and maybe get stuck there. I want to start at the top. I want to rock the movie world like it’s never been rocked before.”
“With your track record, couldn’t you just get a job working at one of the major producers?”
Wing dismissed the concept with a toss of his head.
“It’s not my nature to work for someone else,” he said. “I’ve never been wired that way and never will be.” He paused and added, “Your face would be perfect for the big screen. When we get to Bangkok, I want to do some acting takes with you.”
“Are you serious?”
He nodded.
Yes.
He was.
Dead.
“I’ve been writing screenplays for five years, just for kicks,” he said. “My latest one is a crime thriller called, Unkill Me Again. I know it sounds conceited, me talking about my own work, but I really think it’s a winner. It has a seriously delicious twist at the end, the kind that gives you whiplash and makes your jaw drop. I’ve played every scene in my head a hundred times.”
Jamaica studied him.
“Moon never told me any of this,” she said.
“That’s because Moon doesn’t know,” he said. “No one knows. Only you.”
“So why me?”
He shrugged.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe because you were open with me last night and now it’s my turn to reciprocate.” A beat, then, “Am I boring you, telling you all this stuff?”
No.
He wasn’t.
The opposite.
“I think you have what it takes to make it happen.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Everything that’s ever been good in the world has started with what you have.”
“You mean a plan?”
“No, I mean passion.”
11
Day 2—August 14
Tuesday Morning
KANJANA HAD A FUTON in the main room that opened into a bed and that’s where Prarie slept. She woke groggy Tuesday morning, the victim of tossing and twisting all night, partly because of an incredibly fierce thunderstorm that moved in shortly after they went to bed, but mostly because of Kanjana’s last words: “This journal is a piece of history. It’s worth its weight in diamonds. There are a thousand people in this city that would slit your throat and never look back if they knew you had it, so be careful. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t tell anyone about it.”
“I won’t.”
That was last night.
This morning, the air smelled like rain and puffy clouds filled the sky. Longtail boats were already speeding up and down the canal which now, by the light of day, showed a fair share of pollution, flotsam and jetsam. Kanjana’s bedroom door was open but she wasn’t inside, or anywhere else in the house for that matter. Prarie almost used the opportunity to snoop around but instead warmed up the shower and stayed under the spray until the jetlag and wine and remnants of Paris washed off. When she got out, Kanjana was there, back from a morning jog.
“Morning, glory.”
“Back at you,” Prarie said. “I was thinking that, in hindsight, it’s lucky that nothing ever happened to the journal over the years. Now that I know what it is, I think it would be wise to photograph the pages and have a backup copy, just in case something happens to the original.”
Kanjana nodded.
“That’s actually not a bad idea,” she said. “Even if the backup copy got into the wrong hands, it still wouldn’t diminish the value of the original. Are you going to sell it or keep it?”
“What? The original?”
Right.
That.
“There’s no way I could ever sell it.”
“That’s what I thought. Come here, I want to show you something.”
SHE LED PRARIE TO THE BEDROOM CLOSET. Under a blanket in the back corner was a large, formidable safe. “This is bolted to the floor,” Kanjana said. “Can you remember the combination if I tell you?”
“I think so.”
Kanjana told her.
Prarie repeated it to herself and said, “Got it.”
“Don’t leave the journal sitting around anywhere,” Kanjana said. “Keep it in the safe. We should have done that last night. I guess the wine had me.” She looked at her watch and added, “I have to jump in the shower and then head out. Treat my house as yours while I’m gone.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
Kanjana shook her head.
“It’s work. Just chill out here.”
The drone of a longtail boat coming up the canal softened as it approached the bungalow. After it passed, it sped up.
Prarie looked out the window.
A muscular man sat in the back, a man with brown hair and pale skin, clearly not Asia. He stated at the bungalow even after the boat passed, but quickly turned his away when he saw Prarie.
“We might have company,” Prarie said.
Kanjana stepped onto the deck and caught a glimpse of the boat just before it disappeared around a curve.
